Turn Based Combat? Control NPCs?

[Hebrew Dragon]

Hi,

Well long time lurker is finally posting...

The work on Exult is stunning, and I guess the only thing I always hated about u7 was the combat.

I much preffered U6's combat - turn based, and able to control the NPCs (never had Iolo shoot me in the back....)

Is there any chance of this being done in Exult?

[Colourless]

There is a very small chance that something like this may be done sometime after the V1.0 release. But no promises though.

-Colourless Dragon

[drcode]

Of course, if you're interested in coding, you could volunteer:-)

[Darkstar]

Oh My God we're all doomed!! Microsoft has come to grab exult!! What are you up to, Hebrew Dragon?? Exult .NET?
*eg*

--Michael

[drcode]

Be nice. I may be a Linux fanatic, but I can be bought:-) Plus, I must admit that I once interviewed and got a job offer at Microsoft.

[Hebrew Dragon]

Yes! yes! A new piece of software for Uncle Bill to conquer. Muhahahah!

Ok, in all seriousness, try not to allow my current place of employment to seriously affect you preception of me.

Altho, in the words of the BORG, you too will be assimilated.

Anyway, I would actually be interesting in helping code such a thing. I have yet to download the source for Exult, but I assume the combat code is in there somewhere, right?

[nadir]

No, the combat code is beamed from outer space when you first launch Exult

[Mirek]

I completely agree with Hebrew Dragon: the combat in Ultima 7 was the worst I have ever seen in any RPG. Having turn-based combat would make the game perfect...

Origin was *very lucky* that the other parts of the game design were superb, so it outweighted the awfull combat (which in itself would be otherwise able to kill an average game - so bad it was IMHO).

I usually did this: switch into combat mode, click on enemy and wait till party wins or vise versa. No strategy, no spells (unless I really needed them).

[Hebrew Dragon]

Heh, Nadir ...

Basically, my questions stems from a total lack of awareness of what Exult really is under the covers.

I guess my assumption was that Exult was a shell invoking as much core code from the original game as possible. Your amusing response implies that Exult is, in fact, a complete re-write of the code (reverse engineered, basically) that only uses U7's data files...

Well, enough talk, time for me to just download the code... altho it was much more fun talking about a subject that I really knew nothing about.

[nadir]

It is a bit more complicated than that. Exult is more like a VM, with a set of predefined system calls (called intrinsics). These intrinsics handle things like displaying shapes, playing sounds/music, handling combat. The actual story/script of the game is contained within the Usecode file, which implements most aspects of the plot.
The two are closely intertwined...

[Hebrew Dragon]

Yes... I began looking at the code, and saw it was even more complex than I had assumed.

The learning curve here actually seems pretty steep. I had assumed there would be a lot to learn, but still...

[nadir]

Why do you think it took us 3 years to get to this point...

[artaxerxes]

I don't really see why th VM analogy is used. Anyone care to explain that thing opposed to the engine analogy that I thought Exult was.

Artaxerxes

[nadir]

The term "engine" doesn't really explain much. The term VM implies that there is a form of virtual machine that runs some form of bytecode. And that's what usecode and it's interpreter are.

[Telemachos]

Well, actually I think one would usually use the term "engine with a usecode VM build in" about Exult. Calling it JUST a VM is obviously nonsense.

- Telemachos

[nadir]

In fact that is why I told HebrewDragon that it was like a vm with a set of external subsystems (combat, etc), whereas he thought it was JUST a VM.

[drcode]

Telemachos: You're "engine with..." description is exactly correct.

Hebrew Dragon: We have about 100K lines of code, all C++ written by us. One member of the team estimated that it would have cost around $3,000,000 US if done commercially. So that would be the price if Bill wants to assimilate us.

Also, I should warn you: WJP's first contribution to Exult was to port it to Win32; but since then, he only works under Linux. So maybe it's true that OpenSource is viral:-)

[Colourless]

Well, I still hail to Bill. It's argueable that I became less open source over the length of the project.

-Colourless Dragon

[suraimu]

>Hebrew Dragon: We have about 100K lines of code, all C++ written by us. One member of the team estimated that it would have cost around $3,000,000 US if done commercially. So that would be the price if Bill wants to assimilate us.

DON'T SAY THING LIKE THAT!@#%

That's the kind of pocket change that Bill spends during -lunch-.

[Dominus]

hm, well, I wouldn't mind getting my small share off those 3 millions....

[suraimu]

Things, even.

[Hebrew Dragon]

Yeah, all that code is daunting... and since I have to start working on the 17 service packs that my project is going to need when it finally releases, my abilty to come up to speed on 100k of code is unlikely right now.

Rats. I really want this feature. Of course, turn based combat is going to require a whole new set of game mechanics to deal with it. My thought, after pondering for 10 seconds, was to derive Action Points from Dex, and maybe modify it by encumberance, and then come up with AP costs for moving, shooting, swinging etc.

It's actually a pretty huge thing... sigh.

[drcode]

From stuff I've read, the real U7 does use dexterity to determine how much each character can more or attack during combat. Exult doesn't do this, yet.