Report while playing through Ultima VII

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 2:57 pm

I've decided to play through Ultima VII again. I updated Exult and the Keyring Mod to their newest version and decided to give a report during my travels, what kind of issues I did encounter. I feel this is more constructive than reporting a single issue in a separate thread. I do update whenever I've finished a part of the game (generally a town).

This is not complaining. Instead I see this as a way to give an overwiew what kind of things still need fixing.

We do start in Trinsic.

General Issues noticed:

-The music looping is not optimal. In the original, the music looping took into account that you were still in an area (like the stables at the start or a tavern) and did loop even if you had gumps open or were in a conversation. Is it even possible to replicate this behavior.
-There are issues with the shutters and streetlights. NPCs only open shutters, but don't close them in the evening. The behavior with streetlights also isn't consistent, as not only do few NPCs turn them on, but they also don't turn them off. The exception is, if YOU did turn them on, then they do turn them off.
-Stuff that lands in your backpacks does clutter in the upper-left corner for some reason until you re-arrange it.
-Distance weapons in the hands of the party still work wonky. While they do keep their distance when shooting, as soon as you move manually, they run up to you, ruining the distance bonus.

Issues in the area:

-Even through the moongate at the beginning does close before Iolo stalks to you, the sound only vanishes after he's done talking (the small delay from the original before he starts talking is missing).
-While the mayor is still around the stables, he should give off comments like "Should secure the crime scene", which he doesn't do.
-Appolonia''s schedule lacks some details. The placement of objects and her actually being seen cooking stuff is still missing. She also runs to her house sometimes without reason. Also, her barks should only appear when she does have customers in her tavern.
-To my annoyance, Spark for some reason spawned on the table in his tower and I had to use the hackmover to enable him to move again.
-Markus, for some reason, can freeze on the spot and doesn't do anything until it is dinner time (thus he doesn't react to his surroundings like closed shutters...). Interestingly, moving him with the hackmover fixes this temporarily.
-The scene in the haunted forge is bugged. Neither give my companions comments like "it's haunted", nor do they barf. Far less objects are moving, too.
-When moving out of the north gate, Iolo complains about the rain. However, the scripted rain did not appear.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 5:20 pm

Have finished Paws:

General:
-The thing with the shutters becomes a bit more mysterious. In Paws, people do close shutters at the evening. Also observed that there seem to be two periods of shutters and lights, each switch occuring at 9:00AM and 9:00PM.
-Also noticed some graphical anomalies - overlap problems. Noticed in the tavern with the big beer keg once the door to the room with it got opened. Some things like this already happened in Trinsic.

Issues in the area:

-Observed Morfin, Baleva and Thurston freezing up as well. However, doesn't seem to break their schedule. Once the schedule says to leave the shop for food, sleep, they do. However, they don't move around and don't do all the small actions. Very mysterious.
-Polly does have the same tavern work problems as Appolonia.
-Thurston can't be called to the front room with the bell, even though he should be.
-Camille and Tobias work the fields, but don't actually cut the crops. (I think this one is already known)

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 7:00 pm

Thanks for taking such a detailed playthrough. It's much appreciated.
My thoughts on this
- music looping: there is a Audio setting to loop http://exult.info/docs.php#audio_gump
- some schedules would probably need more work, street maintenance and food serving for example
- placing stuff in the backpack could probably use a randomizer but it is a known issue
- combat in U7 is bad, we didn't improve much if at all, for example the combat settings of the original don't work at all AFAIK
- red moongate sfx hang is a known bug - maybe the animation needs speeding up just a tiny bit
- mayor barks, can't see that in the original. He barked "Another day, another gold coin..." (which is in the usecode but there is no such bark as you wrote)
- graphic overlap problems are known and mostly can't be fixed without rewriting the whole display code which won't happen
- Thurston and bell, are you sure? Testing this didn't really give me that impression in the original
- crops is a known issue

Don't see these comments as a way to brush you off, please, just a feedback.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 7:28 pm

Concerning the music looping.

In the original, it went like this:

As long as you are in the music area (like the stables at the start, a tavern or dungeon) the music would loop, even if you have gumps open or hold a conversation. Once you DO leave the area, the music would run out and then switch back to ambient sounds (unless another music is triggered).

In Exult, there are two behaviors:

-With looping enabled, the music loops endlessly, until you trigger a different music! The trigger that once you leave the music area there won't be more loops is missing. Thus you also never hear embient sounds (birds and stuff).

-Without looping, the music just runs once and won't do so again unless you again enter the building in question or run over a very specific trigger.

I compared it with the original. Right at the start in the stables, the song loops until you leave the stables, then it won't appear again. In Exult, the behaviors above happen.

That's what I meant that the looping doesn't work like the original (in the original, the looping was quite clever).

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 7:46 pm

Re-checked the original.

-Thurston does come to the front room when you use the bell and he also follows you a bit until you leave the mill.

-In Paws I didn't see Balayna's barks if someone wants to buy Antiques, but maybe that was because of the freezing problem (is the freezing thing related to scheduling troubles?).

-Also noticed Morfin should move around in his entire shop, right now he only moves in the part left of the table with the saw, and also never notices the shutter on the eastern wall.

-Perhaps the Transic mayor actually got extra barks in the German version? (where I did see these)

-Spotted the distance weapon problem. In the original, companions don't follow your moving commands in combat mode unless you really start to put distance between yourself and them. In Exult, they react even to a single step the Avatar doesn't do automatically and run to him. Fixing this would make combat with distance weapons much more bearable.

By the way, nice touch the danger music now works correctly. Saves you tons of trouble, since otherwise enemies attack all of a sudden.

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Nov 20, 2016 7:56 pm

can you please enter bug reports in our bug tracker for
- the music looping as you describe what's happening
- Thurston and bell

I've looked at the German usecode and didn't find any bark like that. The mayor has the same barks, only translated.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 8:09 pm

Didn't manage to play much, due to being busy with my job, but I did manage the whole castle. I did also pick up my party first thing (myself, Iolo, Spark, Shamino, Dupre, Jaana, Julia, Katrina). Thus this report, while mostly concerning the castle, also has some issues I noticed on the way:

General:
-I know you don't intend the party formation system to be like in the original, but it is really annoying when people fall behind and then have to catch up, due to suddenly moving to a different place or not keeping up.
-The sound of the surf is way too loud. I know an alternative sound file exists, but could you please make this the standard file? It's really annoying.
-I noticed a bug in the music system. Reloading during the game breaks the ambience sounds (when no music is playing) and the danger music. Don't know if this also happens after reviving (need to test). Only a restart of Exult fixes this.
-Somehow, south of Trinsic, the bodies of a deer and a wolf became permanent, thus breaking the spawning egg until I moved the bodies away and manually re-started the egg. (dead bodys of monsters, deffernt from already existing ones and those of NPCs, should always vanish once out of sight).
-Rain looks strange. In the original ,the pattern of the rain was random, while here the drops are in straight lines.
-Human foes (pirates, brigands) always have the maximum amout when gold is present, they also don't have trapped or locked chests in their inventory, like they should have.
-The monster spawn rate appears to be a little too low on the overworld.

Castle:
-Nanna and Miranda were frozen as well. That makes me wonder if this does happen to NPCs who have no actual actions during one part of the schedule, apart from walking around and shouting barks (so far happened to Markus, Morfin, Balayna, Miranda and Nanna). The freezing stops once a different part of their schedule kicks in.
-During training, Geoffrey should always hit the training dummy with his sword. However, at times he just hit the thin air, way off target.
-The guard patrolling the parapets somehow got stuck on the spot directly above the gate.

On the way:
-Sentri should only hit the training dummy with his sword, but also hits the archery target with it, instead of using a bow to train with it (as he did in the original).
-Funny event: at the murder scene in Minoc, Mayor Burnside, after I entered the sawmill, sat down the chair in the small side room and suddenly acted like he was in the tavern, complete with barks! (seems to be schedule confusion)
-The guard with the crossbow that should patrol in front of the mint was absent, instead, a guard with a sword was patrolling in the trees directly north. Some time later, this somehow fixed itself.
-Sean does accept the peer gem Lord British gives in the Forge of Virtue as a normal gem. Maybe the item should get a flag that it can't be sold?

Now, you should expect a longer report once I'm taking apart Britain.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Tue Nov 29, 2016 10:04 pm

The loot on slain enemies is a known bug.

As for the Forge of Virtue gem sale, I thought that was also in the original?

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:13 pm

Finally played through Britain.

When I did arrive at the city, it already was night, so I passed the time by combing through the dungeon west of it and the Spirit Tunnels. I did make some new observations.

General:
-The lighting engine seems to be somewhat buggy. For one, light sources in houses are not supposed to illuminate when you are standing outside. Also, the cave entrance of a dungon does light the surroundings even at night, what it shouldn't do.
-Some sounds from the Soundblaster pack a badly recorded. Especially the sound when using the healing spell sounds quite broken.
-The overlay problems have an annoying side-effect with corspes in cobwebs (as found out in the dungeon west of Britain). It's next to impossible to search the corpses.
-Gazers don't dissolve into insects, even thought hey should do so.
-Sleeping in normal beds doesn't trigger the "Sleep"-music. Also, the Guardian never wishes pleasant dreams.

Britain:
-After encountering more frozen NPCs and realizing they all were in part of their schedule where they don't do any other action than walking around randomly and letting off barks, I think this is some kind of general error with the scheduling. They still go to the next part of their schedule, but when frozen, don't react to their surroundings (lamps, shutters...). I won't mention this from now on.
-The guards in Britain don't turn on and douse the streetlights, despite them doing so in the original. Same goes for the guards in Trinsic.
-Sentri's training angle looks really strange when he shoots his bow at the target. He moves really close to the target and shoots from the upper left. Normally, he should move to the other carpet and shoot a straight line to the target from a distance. I does make me wonder if missile weapons were accidentially set to melee range.
-The Klirathi space ship is not suppose to create music notes when playing the song (it didn't do so in the original).

That said, by now I'm impressed how much better the small things have come since the last time I played the game. The schedules are already quite polished (but still work to do), the lighting engine mostly works now, lots of the annoying bugs are gone. You're certainly starting to get closer to the original feeling.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:26 pm

Two additional issues:

-The paperdoll graphics of the lightning wand are messed up. It is shown in the wrong colors (something that did not happen in earlier versions) instead of being green-to-white and is also missing the color-cycling effect. Additionaly, it does lose its glow when being equipped (but still has it in the belt slot).
-Also, the lightning engine still has a bug. When using the light spells, the light producted should be whiteish. Here however, it's reddish, like the light from a torch.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:29 pm

These details are awesome, keep it up!

Post by **Dominus** » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:43 pm

One important note: dont use the OpenGL scaler, especially lighting is an issue with that (even though that is probably not the source of the issues you mention).

- As for the light spells not making the right brightness, I just discovered this the other day myself

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:47 pm

I'm using the Point scaler, so that it looks like the original, thus this can't be the source of this problem.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 6:51 pm

One quick observation:

I have the feeling the weapon distance table got messed up in some way, or AI isn't taking it into account. The way enemies and the party cluster around each other is very different to the original where both sides always tried to keep at the distance of their respective weapons. (this strange bevavior also makes the risk of injury way too high) This also explains why missile weapons are not shot at a distance (I also observed this with a Gazer shooting fireballs at point blank).

It does not however happen when you attack something manually that's not an active foe.

This is kind of crippling, making combat an unneccasary pain.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 7:58 pm

Played through Cove.

General:
-I noticed a bug in the paperdolls. If you equip a regeneration ring and then equip a weapon that's held like a halberd or hoe, then there's a green line on the right side of the paperdoll (at least a male one, didn't check female). You can even use this line the pull off the ring.

In the area:
-When Rayburt is training, he often hit the thin air instead of his training dummy.
-DeMaria is supposed to loiter around inside the tavern before 12:00am, not outside it.

Btw., Cyclops cove was fun, these giants are pushovers compared to other enemies. Btw., aren't they supposed to throw boulders? They didn't do this here.

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 8:27 pm

The paperdoll bug is actually in the original as well. That is in SI. My memory is hazy but I found that green line too at some point and investigated. There might be a closed bug report by me about this in our bug tracker.

There is clearly something wrong with the schedules and combat/training animation. Can you file a report on this dummy and target practice, please?

Also about the boulders. We might have to look at the original to confirm this.

Gotcha! · Post by **Gotcha!** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 8:41 pm

I don't recall the cyclops throwing builders. In your defense, it's been a long while since I've played the original (although I did play both games so many times that I think I would have remembered it).

Is it possible you're confusing these cyclops with cyclops from other games?

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 9:37 pm

Found some myself.

In DOS, the mountain top behind the Wall of Lights is hidden. In Exult, it is visible.
Batlin's goon Brunt has a Sword of Defense in his last battle. He does not have it in Exult.
Batlin's goons all de-polymorph in death, but do not in Exult.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 07, 2016 10:53 pm

Went through Minoc (but not yet Covetous) and noticed a few things:

In the area:
-Jakher and Karenna also do their shooting at the target in the same strange manner as other trainers (walk up net to it, so close you don't see a flying arrow). This is part of my assumption, that the range system of the weapons got broken.
-Jakher also wanted to open a shutter and once outside forgot how to return inside. It seems interrupting his training schedule is prone to breaking.
-The murder site did not get cleaned up, unlike the Trinsic site. (maybe fixing the disappearing bug was overdone?)
-At 9:00am, mayor Burnside simply appears in his office out of thin air instead of walking there.

Maybe I'm wrong and Cyclopses don't throw boulders. Trolls should do so for sure however, but haven't checked them yet.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 3:51 am

Neither Cyclops nor Trolls throw boulders in U7. They might have slings though.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 5:22 pm

Shamino keeps pointing out how sick the Avatar is every time Lydia's poison returns. I don't think it does this in DOS.

The weapons distance bug is also affecting melee weapons. Everyone just goes in as close as possible, making it look like a hug-fest.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:08 pm

It's no longer possible to have a conversation with your Fawn Trial companion through the jail door cell.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:15 pm

It is possible to walk out of Fawn after the first trial session. Killing Volden seems to stop that though.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 12:42 am

Why can't Jendon speak over the bar, but Pothos can?

Gotcha! · Post by **Gotcha!** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:35 am

"It's no longer possible to have a conversation with your Fawn Trial companion through the jail door cell."

Are you sure it was possible in the DOS version though? I think it wasn't possible there as well.
It should have been possible, seeing how you can have a nice chat with Iolo while he's locked up, but I don't think it ever was.
Either way, would be nice to have that fixed. Meanwhile I'll just pretend Dupre is being pouty over the whole ordeal.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 2:40 pm

^ No, not certain. It'd be a good bit of code since the Companion that ends up on trial changes from game to game.

Post by **Dominus** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 3:15 pm

I *think* for a time our code was wrong and you could talk to Iolo, essentially enabling you to ask him to join. We fixed that one or two years ago while fixing a bug that made the magelird start a conversation with you at a time he shouldn't be able to.

Gotcha! · Post by **Gotcha!** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 11:03 pm

Sorry for the confusion, I was comparing Dupre's jail time in Fawn with Iolo's jail time in Monitor.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 14, 2016 8:30 pm

While I have not continued my journey yet, I simply had to report the castastrophically broken range system to the bug tracker at 9, the highest priority.

Honesty, how could this even happen and then ignored? Is the disregard for the combat system of U7 so bad that they simply ignore the problem when Exult breaks it further?

Btw., the combat tactics DID work in the original. Did they got broken and simply not repaired by Exult as well? (I heared the claim they were broken in the original, which is BS)

Post by **Dominus** » Wed Dec 14, 2016 9:25 pm

It never got implemented, mostly because combat in U7 was that terrible, I think. As with everything, people have different priorities. Exult is an open source project - no one gets paid to do anything thus you can't make people work on something when they'd much rather work on another thing. And again, combat just wasn't on anyone's list and with so few developers active...

paulo · Post by **paulo** » Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:39 am

Exult is currently quite broken, but it's still the best we have. It doesn't help that there is only currently one person regularly diving into the more complex parts of the code. And the code is kind of spaghettish, but that's games coded in c or c++ for you. When AI comes into the picture everything about gamestates gets tiresome.

Still, i'm quite excited to see commits regularly happening on git.

paulo · Post by **paulo** » Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:45 am

Not to mention animations, animations drawn in iterative code are damn annoying with the deltaTs. And exult has them everywhere handcoded and sometimes it even has to have skip frames functionality.

Dale · Post by **Dale** » Sat Dec 17, 2016 1:07 am

Quite frankly, I am glad people make time for this in the first place. Big thanks to all those tinkering away on Exult.. even if it's only a few days a year. Your work is hugely appreciated and I am aware everyone's time is valuable.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Sat Dec 17, 2016 10:15 am

I did do some further travels. Got the magic carpet to get some well-needed equipment, since I soon want to tackle the Forge of Virtue.

-I did notice an interesting effect. If characters (party and enemy alike) can't run up to their foe, they DO use missile wepaons at a distance. Saw that when confronting a wizard with a huge table in the way. Iolo did shoot arrows at him as intended and the wizard's fireballs also travelled the distance. This could be important.
-Is it normal that the pirates at the fort in the Drylands at first say they want to speak with me and don't become aggressive? They only started attacking when I entered the building.
-Annoying: When I tried to kill the fighter on the upper floor of the building on the Isle of the Avatar, I didn't manage to kill him right away and when he got up again, he suddenly stood on the air on the other side of the outer wall. Had to use the hackmover to get the magic armour I wanted.

I also visited Vesper and noticed a few things:

-The spawning egg at the entrance of the mines is a bit too aggressive. In the original you sometimes meet rats there. Here, you get mobbed by rats every time you come close.
-While wandering around, For-Lem somehow got stuck in a wall (specifically the northwester corner of Lap-Lam's house. I think his schedule would have freed him, but I used the hackmover to make sure.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Mon Dec 26, 2016 3:29 pm

Finally being done with Jhelom. Game was a bit instable here (don't know if it's due to Exult or the Keyring Mod) and kicked me to the desktop two times.

General:

-The darkness when you go to sleep and the Guardian talks to you is too short. He's still talking when you already wake up, while originally the screen stays black until he's done.
-Waking up at the early morning sometimes screws up the light level, causing it to already be full day, which it shouldn't.

In the area:

-In the Heftimus Cave (the cave next to the moongate) a slime did spawn in a wall. I did hear the sound and couldn't run at fastest, yet also couldn't attack it. Seems to be the same problem that already got reported.
-In Jhelom, the pathfinding engine seems to have REAL trouble with the bridge. Considering how often I did see character getting teleported, there's something to it.
-Timmons' place in the tavern is bugged. Where his plate is set, there's a big white bottle and these constantly are in conflict. In the original, Daphne did remove the botte and put it somewhere else before setting the plate.
-Ophelia's work hours are strange, although that could be from the original. It was just weird seeing her hang out in the tavern, but her tell me she's off-duty.

Now, some suggestions for the keyring mod:
-After telling Sprellic he's no longer in danger, would it be possible for him to get a new schedule and again work at the tavern? Would be a nice touch.
-The fake banner maybe should be returned to the place of the original after giving it to Syria. (Is is possible to make it appear in the hall?)

Gotcha! · Post by **Gotcha!** » Mon Dec 26, 2016 11:38 pm

Ophelia telling you she's off-duty is likely intended because she's lazy and has Daphne do all the work.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 2:08 pm

I moved around quite a bit since the last update. Suprisingly, I didn't notice that many issues. I did go through Dungeons Wrong and Despise (the real Despise, not the stupid swap-error they did), solved the Forge of Virtue and Keyring Mod and finished Yew. I'll put it all into one tap, since Yew not exactly can count as a city.

-I did notce that when evil mages create fire fiels, there's a good chance there's a flickering effect that presists (like some of the creation animation is constantly looping on top of the field).
-In Wrong, Evil Mages and sometimes Liches tend to spawn or teleport into walls, which they shouldn't. Also, the instra-Death Bolt from Liches against the Avatar is severely annoying and downright broken.
-In Yew I again noticed the teleportation thing. Is that a weakness of Exult with schedules over greater distances?
-Of course with bradman I did notice the usual problems with missile weapons.
-Strangely enough, at first I couldn't talk to Thad. Only when he moved into a clearing could I talk to him.

Some Comments:

-I got lucky with the Keyring Mod, since I got a gem from Joneleth that already was perfect, saving me from gathering ingedients.
-Playing through this, compared to how Exult was three years ago (last time I played), it's a huge improvement. Everything got polished a lot. Three years ago, this list of broken stuff would have been ridiculously long.

Post by **Dominus** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 5:06 pm

I'm not sure if some of your problems might be caused by the keyring mod. Especially the frozen NPCs.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 5:09 pm

Played Serpent's Hold, did notice a few things:

-Sir Richter's smithing schedule is wonky. Instead of using the hammer while in front of the anvil, he does it when standing beside it. Also, he should put the hot sword into the through from its long side.
-Menion, while using the anvil correctly, also uses the through in a strange way.
-The weapons distance bug seems to have a strange effect on the juggernaught hammer.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:23 pm

Played Terfin and New Magincia.

-Do Winged Gargoyles even have a sit-down sprite? It did look really strange in the Terfin tavern that they were just standing around while the wingless ones were busy with eating. If they do have, there seems to be a scheduling problem.
-The town hall of New Magincia has a bug in that the western door was placed a few tiles to the west (but it still was fully functional). I did move it back into proper position with the hackmover.
-Aside from teleportation and pathfinding problems, I did notice the NPCs on New Magincia with no specified schedule had too big of a walking radius. They were practically moving all over the island, which was very annoying and they did not do this in the original. Now, Constance should hang around the well, Henry north of the town hall (their ways would cross, allowing to trigger a scene when returning the locket) and Robin and his bodyguards hang out close around their shelter.

Due to this annoyance, I used the hackmover to have Constance and Henry in the same screen for the special scene.
-Boris and Forbrak, as all bartenders, have no working kitchen schedules, but here it is especially noticable.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:14 pm

Finished Moonglow and Skara Brae. Also noticed some other things.

General issues:

-This could be a bug of the original. When pouring a potion on the ground (yes, that works), Iolo scolded me for the waste, but instead of the proper gender-specific title there was a "(Gender)" placeholder.

In the area:

-Addom's schedule in Moonglow does need work. I do remember when not in the tavern, he used to hang out in the healer's house or just walked in the woods close to it. Here however, he walks over the island, which made it annoying to find him.
-The guards patrolling the front gate of the Lycaeum do need work (same as those in front of the mint), since they should only patrol inside the stone arch. Actually, most of the patrolling guards do seems to have that problem and it seems to be something more general.
-The sound of the orrery was so loud, it drowned out the music.
-Rowena in Skara Brae also has the tendency for longer walks she didn't have in the original, where she kept close to her house.
-After talking to all the initial people about the sacrifice (all that are present in the tower), Forsythe actually should list all remaining people right away, instead of going through them one at a time (which was kind of annoying), although I helps to highlight his cowardly nature.

Now, here some specific Keyring issues that need fixing:

-I noticed that the names when examining the flames of priciples with a single left-click is broken. The name of the principle in question is in the first place of the name instead of the last, where it should be.
-Also, shouldn't the flames have the according color (blue, yellow, red)? At least the Flame of Truth could have blue color, as that could be imported from Serpent Isle. (would yellow be difficult?)
-The re-disgned shrines do need some adjusting for the pre-marked virtue stones, as some party members ended up on the shrine, thus I had to leave the screen to get them off.
-Also, using the Orb of the Moons to reach the shrines doesn't seem to work, or I'm doing something wrong.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 8:18 pm

That potion thing is an original bug. Nice find!

var0005 = ("@Those are expensive, ! " + "Plese waste them not!@");

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 11:09 pm

Playing a little further, I did encounter some oddities.

-Either Exult or the Keyring mod caused an error with the Moonglow moongate. Appearing in it, I could move, but my party was stuck, as if on a higher elevation level. Only after leaving the screen could they catch up with me.
-After the destruction of the sphere, the annyoing dust stayed in the air, blocking magic. Only after saving and then reloading was it gone. (in the original, it vanishes after a few moments)
-Also, the Tetheradron and SPhere continued to make noises, even after their destruction. Something they also shouldn't do.
-I noticed a bahavior bug with gaye in Britain. She somehow manged to put cloth in front of the loom and broke her work schedule. Standing on a higher elevation made her no longer cut the cloth into clothes. Removing the cloth from the front of the loom repaired the schedule.
-I think this is a bug from the original, as I can't make Amanda and Eiko in Deceit abondon their quest for revenge against Iskander. Or am I missing something?

Paulon · Post by **Paulon** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 5:16 am

I never managed to stop the Cyclops hunt in the original game either, so I suspect it's original rather than an Exult issue.

Gotcha! · Post by **Gotcha!** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 10:01 am

"I think this is a bug from the original, as I can't make Amanda and Eiko in Deceit abondon their quest for revenge against Iskander. Or am I missing something?"

Definitely also present in the original. You can't stop them from hunting the cyclops.
Maybe this storyline/quest never got fleshed out due to time constraints. Who knows.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 10:57 am

Well, you should have conversation options to convince them to give up after talking to Iskander about the issue (you even get more information they were considering joining the Fellowship!). All die dialogue is written and in the files. This reeks of flag problems, that the correct flag after the converation with Iskander isn't set (happens with a few other NPCs as well).

If the trigger isn't called correctly, maybe this can be fixed.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:32 pm

Being done with the Cube Generator.

-Ambrosia was REALLY annoying, since due to Exult the effect of Kissme's dust persists all the time until a save and reload, while normally is should dissipate quickly.
-Like the other generators, the Cube Generator also still made noise even after being blown up and the magic is negated until a save and reload.
-Inside the cube it did hit me that the sound of the fireball-launchers is wrong. It's clearly not the sound I did head in DOS, where it was a much more subdued one, sounding totally different.
-Now, the lightning after entering the centrer of of the Cube Generator should be one time only, instead there was a lightning storm, where the lightning could even be seen in the caves (which should be impossible).

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Fri Dec 30, 2016 3:22 pm

Note:

The orrery does not work at all.

Now, normally, the orrery should have four different planet constallations, the one you start with and a change each time you destroy a generator, with the final one being close to the alignment. None of this however happens in Exult, also making the orrery viewer kind of redundant.

What happened there? Does the code to change the position of the planets not work correctly?

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » Fri Dec 30, 2016 4:36 pm

Did notice a few things on Buccaneer's Den.

-Blacktooth should only lounge around inside the House of Games, not leave it at times (which seems to be at random).
-The duration of the light spells is way too short compared to the original (especially with "Great Light"). There seems to be a bug with the calculation of the length.

Keyring issue:
-When freeing Anton and Sullivan, the game checks if the fitting keys are in the inventory. If already put onto the keyring, both of them don't have the being-freed dialogue. There either needs to be a check for the keys being on the keyring as well, or the Avatar should not put them onto the keyring.

Knight Captain · Post by **Knight Captain** » Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:49 pm

The duration of most NPC effects is also too short. Sleep potions only seem to last a game minute or two. Most poisons clear on their own without real risk to the life of the NPC.