Line of Sight

[richcon]

Here's a suggestion for greatly improving Exult: implement line-of-sight blacking out of the map, especially for resolutions larger than the original 320x200.

Earlier Ultimas include the concept of line-of-sight, and black out areas that aren't in view. Besides making it more challenging to find secret passages, explore crowded areas, or see out-of-sight monsters, it also made the world seem more real.

Ultima VII (at least the original version) didn't really need this feature, because the view area is so small and claustrophobic that you can't often see behind walls anyway. Setting Exult to a higher resolution opens up the view area to something more realistic (good), but also lets you see through walls (bad!). Hence, using that feature is tantamount to cheating.

I think it'd be great if Exult added Ultima IV-style line-of-sight blacking to compensate for this: only render those parts of the map that the Avatar would normally be able to see. Enable this feature by default if the map view is set to anything larger than the original 320x200 resolution. The player can then enjoy larger resolutions without seeing anything that would constitute cheating!

What do people think?

[Skutarth]

I never thought about it, but adding it in, if done correctly, would improve support for it. The classic style of line of sight is a good idea.

You could also possibly have a fog-of-war effect like in Warcraft, where you see the last state of that area as you saw it grayed out, with unexplored areas being totally black.

[drcode]

Sounds good, but I don't know how difficult or CPU-intensive it would be. I wonder if those older games had the LOS information built into the map.

[Andrea B Previtera]

This couples with the "smart roof" thing too (remember? removing only the roof of the building you're inside, not every visible roof)

[richcon]

I like the idea of completely blacking it out. Fog of war works for strategy-type games, but for RPGs, only showing what your character would normally see makes the experience seem more real.

[Colourless]

As an optional feature being a little CPU intensive shouldn't matter a great deal. Exult doesn't have smooth scrolling, etc, so a frame rate hit may not be noticed.

That said, the U7 dataset will make things difficult to implement line of sight. Unlike the other games, U7 is a 3D world where height makes a big different. Other games are purely 2D tile based maps and height has pretty much no impact. Its much harder to determine when the player wont be able to see something

Smart roof on the other hand would be quite a bit simpler. You could even do something like only Roof pop within a specific distance of the avatar in addition to not popping the roofs of other buildings.

[trevor_clim_3]

hello,

interesting idea!

But I think, I dont understand it correctly. You mean you want to limit the view to 320 x 240 ? So what then is the benefit of having higher resolutions anyway? When I switch to 640x480 and every pixel is doubled in length and height, then it looks like 320x240!

It would be great if someone could explain me that

[richcon]

Trevor:

This idea is so you can set the view to anything you want without spoiling the game by seeing things your character shouldn't -- as in, things behind walls, through mountains, or inside other buildings.

[trevor_clim_3]

thx for your post, Richard!

You mean, when I'm on Buccaneers Den in the Baths I simply can't see the dungeon in the mountain behind the bathrooms? Or can I only see the dungeon but not the items, etc. in it?

[richcon]

Trevor:

If my idea were implemented, you wouldn't be able to see the dungeon or the secret room behind the baths at all, until you got into it. If you want to see an example of what I mean, take a look at the picture at:

http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/64game ... a4game.gif

It's in the low resolution of Ultima IV, but the idea's there. Things that are out of view of the Avatar are blacked out; you can't see them until you come around the corner.

Keep in mind that I don't have the skills to implement this feature, so unless someone who does decides it's worth his/her time to figure it out (and isn't busy on other just-as-important features), this won't necessarily be showing up any time soon. But I'm hoping!

[mjohnston]

would it just be the avatar that line of sight work for,or everyone in the party? another way to do something similar might be to only reveal a room if the avatar is withen the confines of its walls or x/y barriers.

[richcon]

The way I see it, it would be only the Avatar, because that's *you*. So you see what you would see; no telepathicly seeing through the eyes of your friends.

(Of course, if primary control switches to someone else like if the Avatar goes unconscous, then line of sight would work from that person. Basically, whoever's in front.)

[drcode]

I think Colourless' suggestion is pretty reasonable, but true line-of-sight is something better left to 3D engines.

[m4yh3m]

Let us know when you're finished with Exult 3D

[Achenar]

Has anyone picked up and run with Exult 3D? From memory, Sam had sort of found his time lacking and released his progress so far. Not sure if anyone picked up from there though.

[drcode]

I haven't heard anything in months. Too bad, as it looked promising. I may look into it.

[Skutarth]

I don't think I have the source, but I'm pretty sure I still have the binaries somewhere on my hard drive.
Just ask again if that's what you wanted!

[marzo]

I've got my hands on the source, but didn't touch it much (not much time to toy with it, sadly). I also don't know if Servus did much work on it since he uploaded this snapshot of the source.

The source is, however, hopelessly out of synch with the Exult CVS -- Servus downloaded it one day and never updated it again from CVS. And just so you are wondering what I mean by 'hopelessly outdated': the code snapshot he used predates my joining of the Exult team... by about a year.

[Gunnar]

Looking at the IRC logs

[06:17:15] It's not abandoned, Nightmare. I took it to where I wanted it to be ~ it was really just a proof-of-concept. I haven't been motivated enough to finish it up, but I've released all the source code as a clean patch to 1.4CSV.
[06:18:22] And I re-did models, textures, and animations for all of the important shapes. The 3D Studio MAX source models, PSD textures, and compiled models/textures are all available for use, too. It would be easy enough for someone motivated to finish it up the rest of the way.

[marzo]

but I've released all the source code as a clean patch to 1.4CSV.

I'll believe the patch when I see it. Unless servus did a massive update to his code before making the patch (since I got the version I have), then his patch will either, (a) fail to merge with a current snapshot or (b) roll back *every* change in the Exult source since around June 2004 [edit]: (in certain files, of course).