Are NPCs scripts still missing from Exult?

[Hareton]

I'm talking about schedules like NPC in Trinsic writing letters.

[Dominus]

Normal schedules are implemented, not especially fleshed out. There is "sitting at desk" - it might not use all available resources.

[Hareton]

That's why Exult has no sence, things like NPCs schedules build athmosphere and along with baking bread originally were the reason for me to admire this game.

[Dominus]

Thank you. Try it out first before you pass judgement. Jeez...

[Hareton]

I tried, and last time half of the schedules were not working.

[Dominus]

Which version of Exult? A lot has happened since exult v1.2.
and a detailed bug report of which schedules are not working correctly is much more useful than "half is not working" which isn't even true...

[Hareton]

I don't know which version, it was over 1 year ago, but not more than 2 years. I don't have Ultima 7 now to check, but you should know which schedules, since you described the situation: "Normal schedules are implemented, not especially fleshed out. There is "sittingat desk" - it might not use allavailable resources."

[Dominus]

Fine. Good bye

[drcode]

I wonder if 'sitting at desk' is the only one that's not at least mostly implemented. I thought the rest were pretty well covered!

[Dominus]

I have no idea, I never payed that much attention to it in the original, at least not in excessively watching them do stuff.
We are likely to miss the fine tuning (blacksmith schedule for example, getting water from the wel...) on some. That's why I reacted so harsh above, unless someone really really compares the schedules and reports the differences there is no fixing it...

[Hareton]

This is what developers should have done before releasing any version of this game.

[Dominus]

sure and your parents should have taught you manners before releasing you to the internet. They didn't and we didn't instantly release a perfect *ENGINE*.
Exult is an engine not a game, btw.

Are we done now with the unpleasantnesses or should I just freeze the thread?

Seriously, we are an open source project and do not get paid. Exult was started to be a much more modern way of running Ultima 7. And almost all of it had to be coded by looking at the original game and then reproduce it. It's clear that this isn't going to be perfect on first release. Otherwise there would still be no release of Exult, right?
We do rely on feedback from our users to iron out bugs and/or make Exult behave more like the original.
And we do appreciate all bug reports and look at the problem before dismissing it.

If you were reporting "the writing letter schedule doesn't work yet" we could look at it or at least file it for later when one has time to implement this.

OTOH reports like "half of the schedules were not working" is close to useless and not appreciated.
Foremost it lacks the version of Exult you used, it lacks details of which schedules were not working and since all schedules are implemented to some degree, we would need information what part of the schedule is not working correctly.

As long as you don't want to provide these informations, we must consider you a troll and will treat you as such.

[Dale]

Dear Exult team,
Thank you for EVERYTHING you have done in making one of my favourite games playable while also adding functionality to keep things interesting. I'm also always excited to check back and see what's new. The community of mods out there always leaves me with something to look forward to.
Your work in genuinely appreciated.
Sincerely,
Dale

[Korneluk]

+1

Thanks for giving up your own time for a bunch of strangers.

[BH4]

Every time I come here, I can't help but feel the strong desire to express appreciation for those who selflessly, diligently, and tirelessly work on something that they can't have any idea who deeply loved it is by its fans. For years, it's been missed by those who loved and still love it, and now, it's practically a dream come true. I'm in the middle of doing something I've always wanted to do - To build an actual house in Serpent Isle. I'm actually doing it. I can't believe it.

It's beyond unfathomable to me how a complaint like this can exist in a sea of otherwise noteworthy selfless accomplishments.

Once I figure out how USECODE works, I am made in the shade with a glass of lemonade.

[N]

Hareton,

If you want the scheduling fixed, then figure out what's missing in a level of detail that means the awesome unpaid Exult coders can implement reasonably and put it up as a file.

More than just a bit insulting for you to declare that your favourite bit is missing, but that you have zero interest in contributing to the solution, and expect the Exult team (awesome, amazing, and many other praise words) to immediately jump to fulfill your whim.

Let's see if you have the dedication and time to contribute to the project before you attack others.

(and for the record, you really don't need to be a coder of any sort to figure out the schedules)

-N

[drcode]

Thanks for all the encouraging words!

It's been a while since I've done any real improvements to Exult, so I might take a look at the 'desk' schedule. But first, I'll need to get U7 installed and working in DOSBOX, which might be even more of a challenge...

[Dominus]

Nah, running it in dosbox is quite easy, only needs these lines in a batch file (i always call mine run.bat)

cycles=7000
ems=false
xms=true
ultima7.com

And our docs show how toinstall the games via dosbox

[Dominus]

And I also thank you all for your kind words. Great to feel this reassurance

[drcode]

Yes, that was easy, certainly easier than running it in DOS in the old days.

Now I can observe the 'desk work' schedule, and it's fairly lame! The NPC just moves various desk objects from table to table, sometimes creating new ones.

[agentorangeguy]

It was always neat, even though not too spectacular, to watch them work at their desk, even if they were just rearranging things. I think that particular schedule was the only one that I can think of that doesn't work at all. Baking is tricky because it requires a specific table, the rectangular table that looks almost black (not the wooden looking one). Thanks to everyone who works with the Exult code because they fix things pretty quick these days. You all rock!

[TDI]

If you want an intricate schedule, you should check the baking, weaving and especially the bartending schedules in the original. During visiting hours, the bartenders actually mess around in the kitchen, carry food to the guests and put it on their plates, the guests eat it and if the plate is empty they'll ask questions like "Would you like some more?" I think they also put a new plate in place if you took it away. I'm not sure if Exult handles this as well as the original does, but I vaguely remember observing the bartender in Trinsic walking out of the establishment into another house and not coming back.

I think the moment Ultima 7 clicked in my head was when I walked around Britain one evening as it started to rain with lightning and thunder, so I walked into the Blue Boar Tavern and saw all the people eating, talking, the band playing and the bartenders hurrying around. That was one awesome moment.

[Dominus]

What you need to keep in mind when comparing schedules is that you should compare to a recent play of the original. Our minds tend to forget and/or remember it differently to how it was originally. Also the larger view in Exult may make schedules appear a bit less impressive.
Same holds true for actual Exult vs old versions. When you observed that Exult did it way wrong ages ago you might not tested it in an actual snapshot to see whether it works better now

[agentorangeguy]

I think TDI might be referring to something I've noticed regarding the Waiter schedule... The npc seems to have a broad range where it checks for the "bar" table shape to place things on. So, that npc will actually leave the shop entirely and place something on a table farther away. Perhaps there is a way to shorten that range to where the npc would only check for those types of tables an X amount of tiles from their scheduled location?

It is a minor annoyance; sometimes on my U6 mod the Blue Boar barkeep will leave entirely to place something on a counter in Iolo's Bows next door

Other than that, the Waiter schedule in Exult seems to work just as good as the original.

[TDI]

Maybe NPC schedules in the original have a rectangle "area of effect" associated with them. I can't remember ever seeing a major sitting at a wrong desk or a shopkeeper moving out of his shop in the original, something which seems to happen in Exult occasionally. Maybe this data is in one of those data files that was never figured out.

I admit I haven't checked on Exult in a while. All this talk about disappearing object bugs sounded scary.

[drcode]

I think Exult has the area hard-coded in. Perhaps the original checked to make sure the waiter doesn't leave the building.

One other thing I noticed just last night is that in the original, NPC's are a lot more aggressive about opening shutters and turning off lights during the day.

[William]

Yes, the original NPCs will open/close the shutters depending on weather, always turn off lights in the day, and replace spent light sources. I always thought that those were some of the little things that makes Ultima 7 magical.


That being said, you all have done an absolutely amazing job with Exult and it's really cool that you're all still working away, tweaking the little things like this. Black Gate and Serpent Isle are the only games I ever replay, and every time I do so, it brings back fond memories. But I also seem to discover something new, thanks to all the things you guys do.

[Dominus]

TDI, Agent: what I said wasn't entirely tailored for TDI. His post just reminded me to post that

William, we do "street maintenance" (that's how using the shutters, lighting the lamps etc. is called in our code) but as Dr Code wrote, perhaps not as aggressive as the original. We mostly did it for the loitering schedule, just today Dr Code added it to desk work...

[monotremata]

"Thanks to everyone who works with the Exult code because they fix things pretty quick these days. You all rock!"

I highly second this right here! Of all the new games over the years Ive played, I keep coming back to this series all the time. No matter how many times Ive finished any of them, the games are always a blast to run through and Exult is the bees knees when it comes to U7. So glad I found Exult and Im VERY glad to have the team we do behind it. How many other open source projects have you seen that have lasted this long still have the majority of the original team working on it?? Ive never really seen anyone leave the project since day 1. Real life might get in the way and stuff wont get done for a bit but it always ends up getting together.

For us Mac folks, before Dominus began building for it (and me giving him such a headache years ago trying to figure out how to compile it myself), you had to roll your own. There were no snapshots, and when there were, they were not updated anywhere near as often as he does. I had to stick with the release of 1.2 for quite awhile but thanks to Dom and a few others here, we all worked it out and building on the Mac (and making an actual UB that could move from machine to machine) is now a regular occurence. You should see that old thread if you can find it. None of these guys got paid, they gladly took their own time and went through my compiler errors and configurations and helped me get it done right. I never could get it to build as a Universal Binary and never got a static version I could send to anyone else, but Dom figured that out before me, and since then hes been on fire as far as maintaining the release, as well as being the mod that spends the most time watching over this place and answering questions.

[Dominus]

To make my earlier point, I just tested a bit other stuff and encountered two oddities in the original:
- BG, started the game, talked to Finnigan the mayor and then ran to his office. But who beat me and was already sitting at his desk? Exactly

- SI, in Monitor I was messing with Lucillas sleep pattern and suddenly Lydia jumped into her bed....

[Korneluk]

I had thought that Lydia and Lucillia had something between them....that this was a kind of naughty easter egg. Mind you, i was 13 years old when I was first playing SI.

[drcode]

I have a first pass at 'desk schedule' working now. It probably needs a little tuning, since the random 'desk items' I'm creating include things like a parrot that probably weren't created in the original.

LIke most of the other schedules, it's inspired by the original and not an exact duplicate.

[Mr. Swiveller]

Don't tune it - we want the parrot!

Thank you for working on this Dr. Code!

[Korneluk]

Is it possible to give objects in the schedule different frequencies? It could be amusing to have a bottle of ale or a skull appear....bored clerks need help to pass the time.

[drcode]

Too late. I made it boring, creating things like letters and quills like the original.

But maybe we could make it more creative...

[William]

Hehe I watched the Great Captains of Fawn put items down and pick them up and fight to sit in the chair at the desk for some minutes today. Awesome!

[Dominus]

I just hope the items get properly disposed of again (objects caching crash...)

[William]

Looks like everything is disposed of. I parked the Avatar in Moonshade for several day's game time today, and all the people who create things (lab, waiter, weaver, baker, desk work) would only leave one item of whatever they created at a time. I had an old save game that I loaded up (don't remember what version of the snapshot, but at least months old), and there would sometimes be stacks of dozens of plates, breads, potions, cloaks, etc. Looks like that won't be happening anymore

As someone who only took one C programming class in college, I am truly amazed at the work you guys have done, and continue to do!

[drcode]

Dom: I think I did it right. (But you could say that about everything...)

[paulo]

I read on a walthrough somewhere that the one of the serpent statue balances even without 'activation' at the ending, is this still a problem?

[Dominus]

1. give it a try. If that walkthrough was talking about the original game, chances are it is working as the original.
2. please don't fill this thread with more unrelated stuff, I don't see how that is related to schedules

[paulo]

I don't have a save of the ending right now.

The walkthrough is this recent doug the eagle one:
http://www.it-he.org/ (go to the end)

[agentorangeguy]

I tried this out but they don't actually put anything down. They go through the movements and generate items in their inventory but they don't actually place them. Are there specific tables that the npc looks for, as with the baking schedule?

[drcode]

Yes, they look for tables. Maybe I'm not looking for all the shapes. Where, and in which game, is this happening?

[agentorangeguy]

Black Gate is what i tested it on. they'll go through the movements and pick up objects but wont place them back down

[Dominus]

Hmm, a bug report today told of a gone missing parrot in Britain. We need to check whether we don't accidently delete valid parrots during that schedule now...

[John James]

Sorry about the bug report guys, it turns out one of the npc's just had the parrot in his inventory.

[Dominus]

Yeah
But that still shouldn't happen and is probably due to the desk schedule

[julian.guarin.2010]

Ultima 7 means a lot to me. I've played so many games, I've wrote so many lines of code, I remember when I tried to did something like Ultima 7 using QBASIC (I'm from Colombia and in the time there wasn't an Internet connection to figure out anything). Of course I hit a memory limit wall.......

When I got my copy of Ultima7 it was made through money order and mail. I remember the day when I got the pack with the game... I took 3 weeks! I was so so excited! That spectacular (never saw a better box design) black box, the shiny dark blue glyph Ultima 7, the Paul McCartney of Games!.

Opening that box, the smell of the cloth map, the scent of that cloth map still lives in my head. I still have the map, the fellowship booklet, the quick reference card, the metal triangle and the Origin brochures, and of course the black box.

I began to install the game, it was 1993 (perhaps it was an old game for today standards, but in those days... well you know guys what I mean), I still remember playing the Queen II record as I did, the first disk out of six, the second disk and then! Oh no! The horror! xxxx.xxxx file not found on dist (I)gnore, (A)bort, (R)etry. I remembered I wanted to start crying.

But for some reason I did not, I took the fellowship booklet, and started reading. I recall trying to imagine the cities the booklet described, particularly the Farmer's Market passage.... it was magical.

So I woke up the next day, with my enthusiasm intact and pretending the second disk out of six, would work then!... but it didn't. I did not know what to do! I was heart broken, devastated. But then I jump out of my sit! I remembered good old DOS was giving me three choices!, well, I hit (R)etry like 6 hours, (Im not lying)... I did.... and the it happened... after crashing my screen with the Ignore Abort Retry message, once and again, and again, and again, at 5 p.m. the installation went on! And the remaining four disk were just fine, the game installed! It was the summer of 1993!! Oh glorious moment....

So I want to tell to my Exult team friends, THANK YOU, this is not only a game. This is personal, this is my childhood.... this is so, so truly significant to me. YOU ARE MY CODING HEROES, YOU ARE GREAT FRIENDS TO ME, and I don't care if there's a bug or a thousand, You have the truly magnificent spirit of the guys who did this game and for that thank you, really thank you.

Julián Andrés Guarín Reyes.

[agentorangeguy]

I wonder if there is a way to exclude the parrot in the schedule code from the desk items?

Great story Julian! I had one of those devastating moments where the installation wouldn't work, only with the black gate /forge of virtue cd. i kept getting all the dreaded memory errors and such... so i had to clean out all the junk that came with the packard bell computer and finally, it worked! but man, serpents isle was another issue... i had to dig deep and buy an old DOS book to find out which files to delete to get that one to run!