Vista

Paul Bos · Post by **Paul Bos** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:53 am

Hello,

Will there ever be a version of exult Ultima 7 and maybe 8 for windows Vista?

Even in the old days those games ran badly because of Lord British demand for bootdisk. It's a good thing people are capable to get them running on newer cpu.

Yours sincerely,

Paul

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:11 pm

Exult works fine in Vista and for Ultima 8 you can use Pentagram pentagram

Paul Bos · Post by **Paul Bos** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:10 am

It works really well indeed. I didn't check if the stuff was updated.
Bam Bam does the music in Paws.

L@Zar0 · Post by **L@Zar0** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:12 pm

Yes, but you are referring to Vista x32, isn't i? In Vistax64 the installer does not work... or maybe I am doing something wrong? (I tryied with the compatibility mode)...

L@Zar0 · Post by **L@Zar0** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:22 pm

I was wrong. It is working... The download was corrupted... sorry...

Post by **Dominus** » Sun May 10, 2009 6:08 pm

AND Exult works also fine on Windows 7 RC1. Exult Studio also seems to work, haven't tested more than starting Studio, with Exult I tested starting/saving/restoring a new game with both BG and SI...

BUT what shall we write in the download page now?

Just "Windows binary" or "Windows (95-7) binary"? Or just adding 7 to the long list?

MeddlingMonk · Post by **MeddlingMonk** » Mon May 11, 2009 2:56 pm

Or maybe "Windows binary (95 and up)". Although maybe it'd be a good idea to de-list the older versions (95, 98, and ME) just on the grounds it's time for them to die, never mind that Exult works on them.

Post by **marzo** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:12 pm

Although maybe it'd be a good idea to de-list the older versions (95, 98, and ME) just on the grounds it's time for them to die, never mind that Exult works on them.

I know at least one person that uses Exult/ES on Win98, so that may not be such a good idea. Moreover, the Win98 community is very active even today: there is a new unofficial kernel (allowing many XP-and-up programs such as Firefox 3 to work in 9x/Me), new third party drivers (such as USB drivers) and even an unofficial service pack. Saying that it "should die" is an opinion, which, as it turns out, is not shared by many people.

Paulon · Post by **Paulon** » Mon May 11, 2009 6:05 pm

The only reason I upgraded to XP from 98 was because I had to reformat after my credit card details got stolen, and none of the old software I used was still supported.

A few months later I found out it was a site I'd bought stuff from that had had it's database hacked, not an issue on my end that got my details leaked.

I still have an older Win98 machine too, though it's not hooked up to the internet.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon May 11, 2009 6:11 pm

I want to add as an aside, however, that Win64 (Vista-64, some "enterprise" flavours of Windows NT), and Win32 (Vista-32 and every previous "home" version of Windows) have some fair incompatibilities - so it wouldn't be too shocking if the installer did work on one, and not the other. Have they been tested on both.

Post by **Dominus** » Mon May 11, 2009 6:29 pm

We haven't had solid reports on incompatibilities on 64-bit and my W7 test was on 32-bit (don't have 64-bit hardware).

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Mon May 11, 2009 7:16 pm

It would be nice that if there were any actual incompatibilities found with Vista (or others listed in download) that have been reported in detail on the tracker.

Wizardry Dragon:

I'm not sure - VMs have their own problems. It seems to run fine in Vista, with some issues with the 'map-edit' mode and ES. If you're just playing the normal game, you should be fine.

What are these issues so I can test it?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Tue May 12, 2009 5:38 am

MM: I'm talking about the operating systems themselves, with one another, not between one (or both) of them and Exult - the point of my post was"these operating systems dont always play nice with each other, so that could make problems with Exult"

And the second quote sounds like issues with newer versions of WinSock, but that's just a guess. Without more information, I couldn't really say.

I can say ancedotally that my new system seems to run Exult fine with 64-bit Vista, but I've not moved my TFL CVS and everything onto it yet to develop anything, so I've not tried to use ES yet.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Tue May 12, 2009 6:07 am

Sorry, I forgot to remove the first sentence I quoted. I've only used ES shortly in 64-bit Vista myself just mostly to test someone complaining that it didn't work at all and also when testing OpenGL HQ.

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Tue May 12, 2009 6:25 am

Why delisting or adding more windows versions? Just say "Win32" and that's going to wrap it up for all the microsoft architectures on which, infact, Exult can run.

At least as far as I know, Exult doesn't make use of something that's radically etched into one or another windows version, and if there's some installer glitch it's usually solved on the fly by running it in compatibility mode (which I had to do for Windows 7 build 6801, but that's not even an "official" OS, so...)

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Tue May 12, 2009 6:37 am

Every once in awhile there are questions about whether Exult works on a Windows system or another thread about Exult worrking in Vista. When Windows 7 is closer to release or soon after, people will do the same thing. That's why Vista was added to the list. Also, saying Win32 also poses, does it work in insert Windows 64-bit system questions.

Post by **Dominus** » Tue May 12, 2009 8:43 am

AND people just won't understand the win32 part anyway. I *think* we used to have only win32 there and people were confused.

Andrea B Previtera · Post by **Andrea B Previtera** » Tue May 12, 2009 2:05 pm

Maybe ALL WINDOWS VERSIONS would do the trick? I mean, if someone still runs Windows 95 or 98, they're probably aware that they're going to be in trouble with most of the software released in the last 8 years, right?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Tue May 12, 2009 4:57 pm

Dominus: I use "32-bit Windows (95, 98, SE, etc)" in my links

BB · Post by BB » Tue May 12, 2009 7:52 pm

"I know at least one person that uses Exult/ES on Win98, so that may not be such a good idea. Moreover, the Win98 community is very active even today: there is a new unofficial kernel (allowing many XP-and-up programs such as Firefox 3 to work in 9x/Me), new third party drivers (such as USB drivers) and even an unofficial service pack. Saying that it "should die" is an opinion, which, as it turns out, is not shared by many people."

Because I'm sure that this Win98 community is the majority of Windows users, not just a bunch of 9x enthusiasts...

Paulon · Post by **Paulon** » Tue May 12, 2009 9:45 pm

Is there something wrong with providing support for a 'bunch of 9x enthusiasts' if there isn't any problem caused by doing so? One of the points of Exult is to get U7 working on as wide a set of platforms as possible after all.

BB · Post by BB » Tue May 12, 2009 10:26 pm

I was replying to Marzo's post because he posted:

"Saying that it "should die" is an opinion, which, as it turns out, is not shared by many people."

After saying this:

"I know at least one person that uses Exult/ES on Win98, so that may not be such a good idea. Moreover, the Win98 community is very active even today"

Which seemed to imply that he believed that this Win98 community was a majority, as to make MeddlingMonk's opinion one "not shared by many people".

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Tue May 12, 2009 11:38 pm

Maybe ALL WINDOWS VERSIONS would do the trick?

Please help. I can't get Exult to run in Windows 3.1. It says exult.exe isn't a dos program. I know that it is a Windows program. How do I get Windows to know that?

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Wed May 13, 2009 12:32 am

I guess its not my place to say it but that's really quite enough, you guys are getting quite silly and nonsensical for the point of being contrary.

If there are genuine compatability issues, by all means put them in the bug tracker and if someone is available to look at it they will.

If not - well, you're free to speculate all you want on issues - after all, thinking about what we could bump into with issues is helpful - but really, comparing and arguing about different Windows versions isn't very productive, IMO.

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

Post by **marzo** » Wed May 13, 2009 12:33 am

Please help. I can't get Exult to run in Windows 3.1.

While your point has been made, I seriously doubt that anyone using Win3.x today would try to run Exult on it: they would just make a boot disk and run the original U7/SI.

With that out: Hm. Too bad that there isn't a DOS port of SDL, it would be interesting to see Exult run under DOS using DJGPP to compile... But I tremble with horror at the idea of developing a multitasking library to get Exult and ES to work at the same time...

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Wed May 13, 2009 2:31 am

Of course it was a joke post. I forgot that Windows 3.1 even supported 32 bit data.

Post by **Colourless** » Wed May 13, 2009 5:43 am

Exult may be able to be made to run in Win32s but with no multithreading you wont be getting sound.

Salicias · Post by **Salicias** » Wed May 13, 2009 9:29 pm

We must remember the mission statement on the front page here: "Exult is a project to recreate Ultima 7 for modern operating systems..."

What constitutes a modern operating system is another issue, but being that Windows 3.1 was released before Ultima 7 should put that specific issue to rest.

Post by **marzo** » Wed May 13, 2009 11:04 pm

I don't think anyone is seriously considering porting Exult to DOS or to Win 3.x.

MeddlingMonk · Post by **MeddlingMonk** » Wed May 13, 2009 11:18 pm

Good point. What is 'modern'? In Western historical terms, 'modern' is everything from the 15th century onwards. I think that can be ruled out. Windows 3.1 is obviously just being silly. So would any Mac OS before version 10. Maybe as a practical matter, it might be just a case of what the devs have to play with. If someone contributing code has, say, a Win95 computer then obviously that person can test builds on it. If no one has a Win95 computer, then no testing. In the one case you can say 'It runs on Win95' and in the other 'It probably runs on Win95'. So if you had the latter case, could you say that you support Win95?

The caveats could pile up pretty quickly. The more clutter on the downloads page, the more confusion.

And, yes, Marzo....that's another opinion.

Paulon · Post by **Paulon** » Thu May 14, 2009 12:57 am

I was going to try Exult on Win 95 in response to that, but it looks like the HD on my old machine finally kicked the bucket.

Post by **Colourless** » Thu May 14, 2009 4:15 am

We could just say, Windows (32 Bit).

MeddlingMonk · Post by **MeddlingMonk** » Thu May 14, 2009 3:28 pm

Paulon: It suddenly occured to me that something like VirtualBox might be an option. The webiste doesn't actually list Win95 as a supported OS but Win98 is and they're not that hugely different.

Post by **marzo** » Thu May 14, 2009 4:16 pm

We could just say, Windows (32 Bit).

Even though the Windows binary is 32-bit, it works in 64-bit Windows too; and if we said "Windows (32 Bit)", someone *would* ask about a version for Vista 64-bit or report that it works in it.

And providing a 64-bit binary for Windows might be complicated.

Paulon · Post by **Paulon** » Fri May 15, 2009 6:31 am

MeddlingMonk: I'm pretty sure I could get Win95 set up in a virtual environment, but I was just idly curious how well Exult would work in Win95 run on a genuine 486. I know it could run U7 via a boot disk because it's the machine I used to do that on, without sound. To be honest it's probably amazing that the old machine worked as long as it did before something finally gave up the ghost.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri May 15, 2009 6:36 am

A 486 is too slow. My 233 MHz doesn't run Exult very well.

Post by **Dominus** » Fri May 15, 2009 1:05 pm

and for kicks, use the HQ2X, that one is nearly unplayable on my system and that is old but still a 3GHz CPU...

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Fri May 15, 2009 9:09 pm

I can play with hqx3 in 400x 300 resolution while running some background programs like Firefox, GIMP, and paint without maxing cpu most of the time (nicely playable) on a 2.4 GHz. Do you have a really crappy integrated video or video card or do you use really high resolutions? Perhaps, you are talking about OpenGL HQ?

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 16, 2009 12:10 am

No, i' talking about hq2x on a desktop machine with a radeon agp card. Also running at 400x300 I think.

Post by **Dominus** » Sat May 16, 2009 1:02 am

And I mean exult's hq2x not moe's sdl scalers. I mention this because exult just does opengl not opengl hq...

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Sat May 16, 2009 1:10 am

Sorry, I just find it weird that software scaler performance on your machine which is likely better than mine is worse and was just wondering if there was a setting/monitor size, etc difference that could account for it.

I mention this because exult just does opengl not opengl hq...

Yeah OpenGL HQ doesn't work with the OpenGL scaler. Point or interlaced x1 gives the best results.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Sun May 17, 2009 1:02 am

Exult always worked fine on my Pentium 200mhz old Toshiba laptop (granted, with point fraphics, because I never liked the look of scalers), though Exult Studio was pretty sketchy at the time, when I was still using it.

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Mon May 18, 2009 1:05 am

Since there will be no sound anyway and the program I am using tries to load SDL_mixer.dll instead of SDL_MI~1.dll, is there a simple way to get Exult to compile without the need for it (or change the dll name from sdl source)?

Post by **Malignant Manor** » Mon May 18, 2009 6:16 am

I got a modified Exult running under DOSBox using HX DOS-Extender and a stolen msvcrt.dll (also need opengl32.dll and glu32.dll if OpenGL support is built). It was slow as hell but I haven't made any to adjustments to the dosbox cfg either. My lazy audio disables could be the cause as could the following. HX DOS-Extender has a dummy OLE32.DLL by default so I commented out RevokeDragDrop, ReleaseStgMedium, and RegisterDragDrop.

I'm going to have to try it on my Win98SE machine.