Exult 1.4 fullscreen

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:42 pm

Hello, i'm new here, but i've been an ultima fan for years. I downloaded and installed the 1.2 version and it worked perfectly.
I wanted to play the mods for U7 and SI, so i installed the 1.4.05 snapshot.
The problem i had is that in this version i can't get in fullscreen mode in the lower resolutions (only from 640x480). My computer is very very old (pentium 200Mhz, 64 MB of ram, and my video card is a SiS 6326 of 4 mb. My OS is Windows 98SE).
I'm sorry if this was asked before, i searched for it and i didn't find anything about it.
And congratulations, what you are doing here is amazing!

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:14 pm

Ive never had a problem with running Exult fullscreen. Could you please elaborate a little on what the issue is? Is it just not going full screen? Is the screen blank when it is?

Also, the contents of std_out that Exult generates, as well as std_err, would be helpful.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.com

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 3:16 am

I had the problem while testing in Win98SE on a slightly better computer. There is no useful error output.

It won't even save as full screen. If you try to change the resolution to the lower settings with it already fullscreen, it will only have it at that pixel size in the upper left corner with the rest of the screen black. Then the option gump won't properly display to change anything. With video acceleration enabled, the display problems has mirroring issues added to it, but I could at least see the options gump.

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:35 am

When i enter with fullscreen disabled in 320x200 for example, it doesn't even change to fullscreen, it just keeps that way, and when i enter the menu again, it appears "disabled" again. And if i try to lower the resolution from 640x480 already in fullscreen what happens is what Malignan Manor described.

Should i copy all the stdout text here? it's a bit long, i think.

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:26 pm

No news about this? anything i can try?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:00 pm

I think it has to do more with legacy 98 drivers then Exult. I remember having the same issue on 98 but being able to run it fine on KDE/Red Hat Linux on an older labtop.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:12 pm

The main thing is it worked in an earlier version and then broke. Since this seems to be a OS problem and it worked earlier, the problem should really be isolated. It should either have includes for these versions or a configuration setting.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:37 pm

Aye, I agree. Unfortunately I don't have enough knowledge of Exult's development to really be able to pinpoint it back, but perhaps DrCode, Colourless or Marzo does.

Cheers, Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer, Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands
www.thefeudallands.ca

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:42 am

It might not be caused by exult but by sdl. You *could* try running exult 1.4x with the sdl.dll from 1.2 but it will probably just crash

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 5:33 pm

If i change the sdl, it doesn't even start. Thank you anyway.
It's an SO related problem, because i tried in Win2K in the same computer and fullscreen mode works with every resolution. Terribly slow, but that's a computer thing, i believe.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:45 pm

The old sdl is missing features needed. Exult.exe is linked to missing export sdl.dll:sdl_putenv. Several other things are probably missing too. I really didn't do much testing earlier.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 10:03 pm

I forgot to mention that putting the newer sdl.dll into 1.2 causes the same problems so this is an sdl issue (I still blame Exult because stderr.txt says, "but blame Colorless anyway".

Post by **Dominus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:54 pm

You can try another thing with the snpashot version.
Start a command prompt and set the SDL video driver to directx or windib (I *think* windib is now default and may cause problems) and then start Exult from this command prompt and see if that works.

So, start a command prompt, then enter
set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx
hit enter and then change the directory to the exult directory by entering for example: cd c:\games\exult
then start Exult by entering
exult.exe
and hit enter.
If that doesn't change anything set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=windib and try again...
But it's important to do both the setting and starting of Exult from the command line, or else it won't work.
Please report back on how it goes.

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:28 pm

I tried setting it to directx and it worked perfectly! Fullscreen works good in the lower resolutions, and the speed is normal.
Thank you very much for your help!

Post by **Dominus** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:08 pm

Then I'd suggest you make it a systemwide setting, so this will be used all the time with SDL programs.
Thanks for reporting back!!!

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 12:27 pm

I compiled SDL.dll with a little fix I use for Dosbox. This might also help with this issue.
download sdl.zip, unzip it and replace the SDL.dll in your Exult folder with this one. You (hopefully) won't need to do the environmental settings stuf from the command line anymore. Please tell me if that works or not.

Edit: removed link to experimental SDL.dll

SepiaAndDust · Post by **SepiaAndDust** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:00 pm

Whoa! I've got full-screen now! Thanks Dominus!

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:04 pm

great! another question, are you on Windows 9x as well? (I might need this for the FAQ, so I know whether this only affects people on Windows 9x or other Windows flavours, too)

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:10 pm

That modified dll instantly crashes Exult. Making a batch file is a simple fix and won't be overwritten when installing updates.

For those that don't know how here are some instructions.

1) Create a file with the file extention bat ie. Exult.bat
2) Edit the file in a text editor and paste the following line:

set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx

3) Set the path to the directory containing Exult.exe if needed ie.:

c:
cd\Program Files\Exult

4) Add the line:

Exult.exe

5) Save the file

6) Use that file to run the game from now on.

Here is what the finished batch file using the above example looks like when finished:

set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx

c:
cd\Program Files\Exult

exult.exe

Error reported:

EXULT executed an invalid instruction in
module SDL.DLL at 0167:68109d98.
Registers:
EAX=00000103 CS=0167 EIP=68109d98 EFLGS=00010216
EBX=00aafc40 SS=016f ESP=00aafc10 EBP=00aafc28
ECX=00aafc40 DS=016f ESI=00aafc40 FS=0d97
EDX=00000016 ES=016f EDI=0076fa38 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f 47 c2 89 c1 c1 e9 02 fc f3 a5 a8 02 74 02 66
Stack dump:
00aafc40 bff84b66 8195aa10 00aafd68 00000104 00000000 00aafd68 00552fef 0076fa38 00aafc40 00000104 81949fa4 505c3a43 52474f52 46204d41 53454c49

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:10 pm

too bad, that it crashes for you. Shouldn't do it, since it is based on the same SDL release as the original one and has only one little fix applied...

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:19 pm

It works in XP but failed in Win98SE. Could the coding be NT specific? I don't use that computer for Exult unless testing problems other people are having.

SepiaAndDust did you use the modified dll or the command line option?

I'm not sure of Inno Setup's capabilities (the installation program Exult uses), but it might be possible to automatically create a batch file from the user's selected path data and detected version number plus have the batch file be used as a shortcut instead of the exe.

SepiaAndDust · Post by **SepiaAndDust** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 5:07 pm

Used the modified DLL on Win98se.

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:30 pm

Hi, i was already using a batch file with the setting and that works great. Tried the modified dll and it crashes in the start (i made a security copy of the original, luckily

). I use Win98SE.

Post by **Dominus** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:44 pm

Too bad that it crashes for you two. If you don't mind I'll give it another shot soon.
As for using the batch file, can't you set a global environment setting for win9x? I *think* that by adding the lines to autoexec.bat it will become a global setting. It might be worth it for other sdl programs like pentagram. Dosbox afaik also uses the patch I tried here...

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 5:49 pm

I put the line it in config.sys and it works without having to use the batch.
As for the dll, i can check it again if you try something else, no problem

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 1:50 am

Martin does the dll crash for you or does it work?

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:04 am

Malignant Manor: The dll crashes.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 1:51 pm

Oops, I somehow skipped your previous post where you said that.

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:07 pm

@Martin & Malignant
I have compiled another test for you. This time you will get the full Exult compilation, including SDL.dll and SDL_mixer.dll compiled by me with a gcc 3.4.5 version. I noticed that Kirben uses the "experimental" gcc 4.2.x version for compiling. Just maybe that's why it crashes for you two for some reason.
Please tell me if that version works for you. It is based on latest SVN and should be the same as Kirben's official snapshot (except for the compiler).

FYI: I'm applying the SDL patch that Dosbox uses, see http://dosbox.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewv ... iew=markup
without the change to SDL_dx5events.c

EDIT: removed experimental Exult compile...

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:46 pm

The Exult.exe file fails to run. XP outputs that it takes too much memory and 98SE says that it isn't a valid win32 program.

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:03 pm

grrrrrrr try adding libs.zip to the exult dir. It runs just fine on my XP system...

Edit:removed link

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:30 pm

I had an extraction error without a message. The hard drive on the old comp is failing so that may be why. I think I just copied that corrupt file across the network onto the XP computer.

The file does need the extra dlls. It crashes on startup in Win98SE but works in XP. It sites invalid SDL instructions.

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 5:25 pm

I give up

SepiaAndDust · Post by **SepiaAndDust** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 12:38 pm

Hope it's ok if I bump this thread for a pal who's new to Exult and who probably needs the information.

WTV · Post by **WTV** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 12:34 am

"It's an SO related problem, because i tried in Win2K in the same computer and fullscreen mode works with every resolution. Terribly slow, but that's a computer thing, i believe."

If you know that your OS has compatibility issues, then why do you insist on not updating to a later Windows?

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:26 am

"If you know that your OS has compatibility issues, then why do you insist on not updating to a later Windows?"

First, if you see the whole thread, there IS a way to solve the problem(it solved it in my case).

Second, if you give me the money to buy a newer computer i will gladly update to a better windows. I do not insist on anything, i just simply can't afford it.

nissar · Post by **nissar** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:28 am

To add to my previous post:
My computer is very old, i installed win2k in a second hard drive only to try that, and that OS works terribly slow, so i had to keep in Win98.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:48 pm

jfyi:
I have removed the sdl.dll and the experimental exult compile. These were just tests and since they failed for some it's no good anyway. And after a brief discussion with Kirben (our Windows snapshot provider) I saw the reason that it is better to just provide the information on how to solve this with the environmental setting.

@WTV: If people are using a decade old OS it's their choice and I'm sure they have their reasons. This is not the place to start pointless discussions about this.

@sepia, please no bumping, you could have sent your pal a link...

@me, fix the documentation so no one feels the need to bump a thread

SepiaAndDust · Post by **SepiaAndDust** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 4:27 am

Sorry, Dom. He's a pal from work and I didn't think to get his email address, so I didn't know what else to do.

As to "since it failed for some it's no good anyway", don't forget that the patch worked wonderfully well for me. Thanks again!