Exult snapshot for reliable game play

[JB Smith]

Hello dear folks,

my apologies up front if this question is lame, offensive or has been asked too many times (I couldn't find it within a reasonable number of forums pages).

With Christmas holidays coming, I was looking into finally trying to play through BG (a long standing omission from my distant younger days). For this, I need to decide whether it makes more sense to use Exult, or just try to run the original game through e. g. Dosbox. I'd really like to avoid wasting lots of playing time before encountering the infamous disappearing objects bug (apparently still alive: http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p ... 1#p1736151). I am looking for the experience of the game and the joy of re-visiting Britannia, not so much for an academic bug hunting session.

So my question is this: Is there a version (git commit, svn snapshot) of Exult which
* can be compiled on a moderately modern Linux system
* offers some of the improvements developed by the Exult team
* and is confirmed to be usable for completing (and enjoying) the game?

Thanks in advance!

[TDI]

While Exult has some nice improvements over the original, most of them are cosmetic. Some of the things that make Ultima 7 stand out, such as the NPC schedules and the real-time combat, are still not as refined and smooth in Exult as they are in the original.

What I usually recommend to people is to play The Black Gate using Dosbox and The Serpent Isle in Exult. This will allow you to appreciate the original game engine while playing TBG, while profiting from the numerous plot bugs that were fixed in SI by Exult. The Black Gate didn't have any serious plot bugs in the original that needed fixing.

[Dominus]

I would always go the other way around. Exult gives you all the goddies of SI in BG (paperdolls, keyboard shortcuts etc.).
Playing the original is like driving an early 20th century car on todays roads. It can be fun but overall it just is outdated.
Exult can be easily compiled on Linux. Most active developers are on linux.

[JB Smith]

Thanks for your thoughts guys!

Dominus, you said you'd play in Exult, I take it with a current snapshot. Why wouldn't you be afraid that the DO bug could spoil the fun?

[Dominus]

Because we can't reproduce it.
And yes, always with a recent snapshot.

[JB Smith]

The gentleman in the thread linked above seems to have reproduced it just fine. An unfortunate truth about complex systems is that not being able to reproduce a bug doesn't necessarily mean it's not there (I know this by personal experience).

I'll assume for now that there is no recent confirmed play-through version of Exult.

Thanks for your time and input.

[Dominus]

It happened to him, yes, but he couldn't reproduce it. And if we can't reproduce it we can't fix it. I never said it's not a real bug.
It's a bug that might hit you or not same as the original has bugs that might hit you or not. Disappearing objects being one of them...

[Gotcha!]

I'm late to the party, but I'd definitely recommend using Exult.

I've finished both games many times, both vanilla and Exult, and have not seen this object disappearing bug in Exult since many years. And I do play through the games every year or so.
I did have the exact same problem once, I entered Britannia and walls and roofs were missing everywhere, but that was due to an old version of Exult.

Exult has too many features that I simply can't do without anymore, and with the combat now fixed (haven't tried it yet though) it's close to being perfect.

[drcode]

The advantage of Exult is that we can fix the bugs. The original used to crash on me all the time.

Or why not play both?