Exult Forum

Hi all,

This is somewhat of a half-baked thought, but bear with me for a second...

I'm sure many of the Exult community often look at the excellent capabilities and possibilities of the engine and feel a sense of frustration (or sadness?) over the relative lack of new game development utilizing those capabilities. That's not to ignore the credit that the great mods out there deserve - there's some good work happening but often I wonder why there aren't more projects around.

Along these lines, has any thought been given to "marketing" Exult more as an open-source RPG engine rather than strictly an Ultima 7 engine?

Consider the official description of Exult: "... a project to recreate Ultima 7 for modern operating systems, using the game's original plot, data, and graphics files."

With Exult Studio and the associated toolset - along with the experience and enhancements being collected from the various mods in development - it strikes me that perhaps the official description implies a narrower set of possibilities than there are in reality. Those interested in RPG development - but unfamiliar with Ultima 7 or Exult itself - may be overlooking Exult as an excellent basis for their RPG development.

Admittedly, a greater focus on improving support for New Games would be a start - e.g. "newgame.txt" and ES's "Create New Game" functionality needs updating to reflect recent developments and work out-of-the-box. But I'm thinking also about the advertised necessity to own a copy of Ultima 7 - when, in fact, the engine is almost to the point where this is unnecessary (i.e. if working from a minimal set of self-created data files). Again, enhancing new game support would help here, and would possibly give Exult a greater audience and thus bigger potential to provide the basis for new game development.

I don't know if this is making any sense, but hopefully it's clear where I'm coming from . I thought a while back (and posted) a suggestion for an "Exult art repository" which I think would work well alongside improved standalone New Game support in Exult. Admittedly I haven't done anything about it though, partly due to the lack of web development skills .

Oh well, just a few thoughts on the future of Exult I guess
Achenar

I agree. Improving Exult 3D and merging it with the core codebase would also help with this goal, as more would probably want to design in 3D than 2D, and it would help demonstrate that Exult isn't just an engine for graphically outdated RPGs.

Probably the most obvious first step would be to have better starting data files. Maybe we could use some of the user-contributed ones. One trouble, though, is that they all use the Ultima7 palette, and I don't think we should redistribute that.

Maybe we could use one of the palettes from the Gimp, and convert the artwork to it.

Just use the windows standard 256 colour pallete. AFAIK, it's an official standard and as such you can't get into any trouble for using it.
--------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer,
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

ohh yes. I would be very interested in this

Ummm... a question: "Ultima VII palette"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't U7 just use *one* 256-colour palette?

The big question is, regardless of its size, is this: Are colour palettes even copyrightable in first place? A tough question. Probably not copyrightable due to very low amount of creativity required for such task, in my opinion, though I'm not a lawyer. And I seriously doubt EA has trademarked the palette either. =)

Yes, the question of whether a palette can be copyrighted is interesting. Perhaps shuffling around the colours would be sufficient? Just write a tool to do so and then modify any shapes/images as needed?

Im going to start working on a stand alone game. I dont have ultima VII installed currently and have downloaded exult studio. Studio complains when I try to run it because I dont have any files.

Where may I find the user contributed data files?

Where may I find the user contributed data files?

nowhere. there aren't any save for those contributed to make BG paperdoll more like the SI one.

Hehe re my original post, here's a case in point

When you select "New game" in ES, you get a 'patch' directory with a minimal set of data files that look terrible ('cause I did them:-)). In particular, the palette only has about 6 colors and the Avatar is a stick figure.

I like the idea of using a standard palette, such as the one used in Windows or the "web" palette in the Gimp. The main restriction is that the top 32 spots aren't used for normal drawing, since those are for palette animation and translucent colors.

If someone would like to contribute some artwork with a non-U7 palette, I'd be happy to use those for "New game". And your name will immortalized in our "Credits":-)

Oops sorry, I deleted the stick figure link post because for a short moment I thought it was spam Please write it down again

www.kingdomofloathing.com

I gave it a try myself and it is a REALLY fun little game.

Isn't it? Enjoyable through and through.