Movement and animation issues

[lightcastle]

Hi guys. I'm trying to enjoy this game, but there are two things bugging me about it.

One, the avatar has three walking speeds based on cursor distance, and I never want to use the first one because it's soooo slow. I am trying to use the middle speed always, but it's too hard, especially in close quarters. Is there a setting to get rid of this first speed?

Secondly, I've got "smooth animation" enabled which is very nice. But it only works on the avatar. All my party members and npcs still move like they're teleporting. It's kind of bugging my eyes out. What can I do?

Thanks

[Knight Captain]

Did you try raising the FPS from the default?

[lightcastle]

I'm using 10fps.

[Dominus]

1. you can't change the mouse speed without changing the source code and recompiling Exult. But you can use the numpad or arrow keys to move

2. smooth animation doesn't work well IMO

[Colourless]

Smooth Animation was a bit of an experimental hack more than anything else. fixing its problems would require extensive changes to the way exult works and i didn't want to do that

[Dominus]

What he says ^^^

[Knight Captain]

Maybe in Exult 2.0?

[Gotcha!]

I get the feeling the developers need a serious bribing for that ever to happen.

[Knight Captain]

I'd be a patron if there was an Exult Patreon.

[Gotcha!]

I'd like that, but can't afford much to be honest.
Sure, I could make a small donation, but I don't see the developers jump up and run to vastly improve Exult after having received enough money to buy a few crates of beer.

I think we have to face the fact that this is what we have. Ultima 7 is not that popular outside of its loyal core fans, so funding anything is probably out of the question. And I'm sure that most devs have moved on: Jobs to do, bills to pay.

Note: If someone, after reading this, gets the feeling that I'm feeling ungrateful, it isn't intended! I love everyone who worked (or still works?) on Exult, and Exult itself, to bits. <3

[Dominus]

1. you are sadly right, almost all devs have moved on or burnt out or all of these things
2. our policy has always been that we don't want to receive any money off Exult. Mostly for not being seen as making money off the Ultima IP.

[Donfrow]

I want to use this thread to toss in my appreciation for all the help and effort of everyone involved.

Clearly, to solve the issue of a dwindling fan base is a deluge of custom mods to bring in fresh blood!

[agentorangeguy]

working on it

[lightcastle]

Bummer. I like doubling the viewing distance, too bad the mechanics aren't there for it.

Noob question I'm sure, but why wasn't Exult made for 60fps with smooth animation to begin with? I thought the main selling point of a modern engine was to offer graphical enhancements. I mean... if I wanted it to play like dos, wouldn't I just... use dosbox?

[Dominus]

The main selling point of a modern engine was to make the game playable on modern OS.
Exult predates Dosbox by about three years and the point when Ultima 7 was playable in Dosbox by more years.

And a vital part you should have mentioned is the "doubling viewing distance". The higher the in game resolution, the higher the tax on fps. Also the scaler is an important factor, too.
But the higher resolution also is not safe for gaming. You see too much and events may trigger that shouldn't. Or NPCs appear frozen as they are not triggered. Which looks odd but you would never see in a lower resolution.

[lightcastle]

Hmm, I didn't notice a performance difference in setting the resolution higher. I have a 4ghz cpu. I don't really mind that it messes a few things up, U7 has very nice art and it's great to see more of the world. It's probably the main reason I tried exult first.

[Dominus]

btw. you *can* set the game to play at 60fps but the game is way too fast with this.
(exult.cfg -> )

[Colourless]

There really should not be any performance issues with running at a higher res on any fairly recent system. however there are places where running even slightly above 320x200 will break the game logic Do not attempt playing forge of virtue at a high res or you'll get stuck. Certain events trigger when object go on screen/off screen. and at high res the objects are always on screen so the events never trigger.

[lightcastle]

Couldn't those events be converted to fire based on distance from character so that they are resolution neutral?

Also, monitors are 60hz, so isn't 60fps important for vsync and eliminating tearing? Couldn't world events like movement and time passage be made to last 6x longer so that they appear normal at 60fps?

[Dominus]

No, we can't convert them.

And 60Hz (monitors have different Hz values - 60 is not the universal one), 60fps, tearing - is all more complicated than this.

[Knight Captain]

Shouldn't the Avatar distance remain in tiles? So even for high-res it seems using that instead of the Exult resolution makes sense. Avatar-Near type of things...

[Colourless]

The high res issues could probably be fixed by rethinking how it works. At the moment its trying to closely emulate the behaviour of the original games. Doing it like that seemed like the right idea at the time

[Knight Captain]

If you fix it, Colourless, I'll put you in my mod.

[Dominus]

It would likely be a very disruptive fix that would require extensive playtesting and bug fixing follow ups...
besides, Colourless is already featured in the SF Island mod

[Gotcha!]

Not to mention the many dragons inside dungeon Destard, who become colourless when turning invisible.

[lightcastle]

Any progress on this front? Almost 2020 and the SNES versions of Ultima 6&7 still have smoother scrolling and movement than Exult.

[Dominus]

no

[Knight Captain]

What breaks in FoV at high-res?

Does the engine support more than 10fps?

[Dominus]

Yes, you can set more than 10 by editing the cfg. It's just not very comfortable to play with more fps