Ultima NUVIE: Ultima 6 in full screen!

[GarfunkeL]

Wow, that does look nice. Hopefully they'll finish while I'm still alive.

 

[Falkner]

Should just use the same font as U7 for its dialogues. It's perfectly readable

No. Gave me headaches. The reason I abandoned Ultima 7.

and immersive at the same time. Yes, I called a typeface immersive. Sue me.

Do you really need a pixelated, swirly font to be immersed in the game? Make it simple and easy to read, that's really all you need for a font. It's quite simple. Fucking up something so essential because of something so needless is a tragedy.

 

[made]

Need? No. But I appreciate it. Much like Ye Olde English or the runic alphabet and all the other little things you don't find in modern games anymore, it adds to the charm of Ultima.

 

[Fezzik]

The Ultima series sure breeds some delightful independent efforts. I'll be keeping my eye out for this one. Thanks for posting about it, Infinitron! Can't believe I missed it back in March.

 

[FrancoTAU]

The fanbase isn't that largest anymore, but it might be the most dedicated bunch. 2 Full on remakes using the Dungeon Siege engine + 2 engine rebuilds to make the game run on modern PCs and moddabile.

 

[Pablosdog]

Yeah, you'd think Garriot would have the same dedication to something he created. We live in a faggotry world my friends.

 

[Luzur]

There are fangames being built on exult.

2 (savage empire remake and Feudal Lands - not to mention the key ring mod, which is actually complete) or more.

are those still worked on? last time i saw something was more then a year ago.

 

[SCO]

yeah
http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?f=1&i=388501&t=388501

 

[Infinitron]

Interview with NUVIE chief developer:
http://ultimacodex.com/2012/07/a-brief-interview-with-eric-fry-of-nuvie/

Eric Fry, the chief contributor for Nuvie, was kind enough to give the Ultima Codex a brief interview.

• Ultima VI is over 20 years old now, and is still immensely popular with fans. The recent release ofSavage Empire and Martian Dreams on GoG.com has certainly garnished its share of positive comments as well. What is your personal attachment to the game?

​

​

Ultima VI was the first game I owned. We had an old XT machine with a hercules monitor which my dad used for work. I remember nagging him for a long time to buy me a computer game. We went to the local computer store, and I picked up Ultima VI. I was enticed by the slick graphics on the back of the box, and to be fair it was one of the only game in the store which would actually run on our old hercules monitor. I remember opening up the box in the car on the way home and marveling at all the goodies inside. The cloth map, moonstone, game cards, and piles of disks were all there. From that moment on I was hooked on the game!​

• Nuvie has really been coming along the last year, and has probably seen more development in the last 12 months than in the previous 5 years. What has brought on this welcome change?

I started working on Nuvie back when I was at university, and in the early days we made quite a lot of progress. Everything was exciting, uncovering the inner workings of the original engine. SB-X was very active at that stage too, which worked well to keep my motivation levels up. As we progressed we implemented most of the easily copyable features in the game. Things started to slow down a bit when we hit the combat and NPC logic from the game. Most of the combat and NPC stats were hard coded in the original .exe which made them really hard to get at. I guess at this stage the project went into a bit of a hiatus. I kept saying I’d come back to it, but never did. It was a bit distressing seeing the posts from people saying the project was dead. I guess it was, really. Finally, a year or so ago I decided to get back into Nuvie development and to give it a big push along with the goal of releasing version 1.0 with Ultima VI being feature complete. I worked away quietly behind the scenes for awhile before people started to notice my activity on the project again. I’m now trying to keep the momentum up, and I feel that the goal of version 1.0 is within reach.​

• Ultima VI’s original interface was somewhat clunky to say the least. What are some of your least favourite aspects of the original?

​

​

Funnily enough I actually liked the old keyboard interface. I didn’t like the key system though. I thought it should have automatically found the corresponding key in your inventory and opened the chest or door for you. This was one of the first enhancements that went into Nuvie. I think the thing that really got me with the original was the rest system. I always wanted a rest until sunrise option. Another thing that I thought spoiled the game for me was the spam cheat. I couldn’t help myself. I always spammed up items. It was just too tempting. Obviously it’s great now while developing Nuvie. I probably use it 5 to 10 times a day.​

• What are some of the unique challenges in trying to turn a largely keyboard and menu driven interface into a mouse-driven fullscreen game?

I think the biggest challenge is getting both modes to work side by side. Implementing the new mode while still supporting the existing original interface. There are also issues with the viewing distance. Some areas in the game work best when viewed on an 11×11 tile window. The keyboard driven conversation interface was quite challenging to adapt too. Luckily, the original developers included the highlighted help keywords. This enabled us to skim them off while parsing the dialog to present back to the user in a mouse based interface.​

• Being a 20 year old game, is there any aspects of the original code you’ve found particularly difficult to decipher, or are particularly arcane today?

​

​

As I mentioned before, most of the original game logic is hard coded in the game.exe file. This included weapon/armour stats and all the monster/npc worktypes and object usecode. This greatly increased the amount of effort required to reverse engineer the original logic. I had to disassemble the original game.exe and go through the assembler code line by line looking for the original game logic. I’ve never seen the original Turbo-C code, but I can imagine it was a bit of a mess. There are massive switch statements in the game which were quite convoluted to trace though! The magic system for example runs out of a giant switch statement with 80+ cases.​

• I really love Ultima VII style conversations and spellbook, and the new savegame menu is great. Any other enhancements you would like to add?

I would like to add the ability to load map patches into the game. One drawback of the larger map window is that you start to see the tile based nature of the game map. It would be nice if we could add a bit more of a randomized nature to the trees/grass etc. I would also like to add support for new NPCs. Smooth walking was another feature that people have been asking for.​

• Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, I can’t wait to see them being supported. Are there many differences under the hood between those games and Ultima VI?

​

​

Martian Dreams and Savage Empire have a few differences when compared to Ultima VI. They use a new font system and have some new conversation operations. They do seem to be more similar to each other than to Ultima VI. I think the main thing is they are a lot smaller in scope. Hopefully once Ultima VI support is done we will be able to implement Martian Dreams and Savage Empire quite quickly. I think having them freely available through GoG.com will also help in gathering support for their development in Nuvie.​

• If you were to start all over again, what things would you do things differently?

Hmm, I don’t know if I would have started the project at all if I had known how much time and effort it would consume. But I guess everyone says that, right? I think If I was starting Nuvie today I would spend more time deciphering the original game logic upfront before starting to code. There are lots of things in Nuvie that we have had to re-work at a later date after discovering more about how they were implemented in the original system. The combat is a good example of that. We built a system for it but just couldn’t get it to work correctly. We have since gone back to the original and are re-writing a lot of code.​

• What lessons have you learned from the development of Exult that have assisted you with Nuvie?

Exult was the reason I started Nuvie in the first place. I saw the wonderful work that the Exult team had done, and saw that no one had started on Ultima VI yet. So. I went to the Exult IRC channel and asked around for help. I think it was Kirben who went away and came back with lots of Ultima VI tech documents from the internet, which I then used to make an Ultima VI map viewer which turned into Nuvie. I think if I hadn’t gotten that initial push from the Exult guys I would never have started the project, and would have moved onto something else. The Exult team were also quite helpful in setting up an IRC channel, website, and forum for Nuvie. There is also lots of boiler plate code from Exult / Pentagram in Nuvie.​

Thank you so much Eric Fry for taking the time to do this interview. And a special thank you to the entire Nuvie team for helping to bring one of the classic entries of the Ultima series up-to-date with the modern age. We’re all looking forward to seeing what new releases are in store for us, and playing Ultima VI fullscreen.​

 

[Stabwound]

I can't wait for Nuvie to reach a playable state. I'm chugging through U5 (great game) but the claustrophobic viewport of U6 is a huge turnoff to me. The Nuvie engine makes the game look absolutely awesome.

It looks like development is going extremely fast lately. Do they have any rough guess at all when it will be released in a state that has all game systems implemented? I see that there was a version released a few months ago, but it doesn't seem like the game is in a playable state yet.

 

[GarfunkeL]

No, it's not feature complete yet. Version 1.0 will be that but I haven't found any estimates for its release.

 

[Heresiarch]

FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT IS SOME GOOD FUCK

My first Ultima was actually the SNES U6. And no, it was completely NOT like the abomination of SNES U7. The U6 had superior music, great UI, and FULL SCREEN GAMEPLAY. Though it lacked the character portraits, stuff like creature corpses, and maybe a quest or two.

OOOOOHHH I sooo wish that in my lifetime can play the perfect U6 by combining the best worlds of the PC and SNES versions.

 

[asper]

Nice U7 style inventory, but still grid based to avoid a clusterfuck.

I always thought the granular U7 inventory was a very funny simulation of a real knapsack

 

[Infinitron]

NUVIE 0.4 released! http://ultimacodex.com/2012/09/nuvie-version-0-4-released/

It’s release time again. The Nuvie Team is proud to bring you version 0.4!​

The big news with this release is that Ultima VI can now be completed in Nuvie without skipping any of the plot or using cheats! This is a big milestone for the project. Thanks to Malignant_Manor for playing through the game from start to finish in Nuvie to verify this.​

We have been very busy working since the last release. There have been 280 commits to our subversion server since the 0.3 release.(1.5 commits per day on average) We have spent a fair bit of time on improving the interface logic and ironing out gameplay issues.​

Here’s a quick summary of what is included in release 0.4​

• New experimental fullscreen map mode. With gorgeous new art by Daniel c. Wurl.
• New roof tile system with map editor.
• Overhaul of interface logic with optional new U7 like interface. Removed lots of interface bugs.
• Added key binding system for in-game commands from Exult.
• Attack target memory
• ‘command’ combat mode.
• Loads of bug fixes
• Loads of small improvements.

There are still bugs to be found and small features to be added (The end sequence still needs doing) but with this release we are drawing ever closer to the big 1.0 release. As usual, please report any bugs on our bug tracker.​

Eric​

 

[Stabwound]

This is fucking awesome. Hasn't Nuvie been in the works for a very long time, around when Exult came out? I'm loving the rapid development lately.

I'm still slowly wading my way through U5, but I can't wait to play U6 in this new engine. Hopefully by the time I get around to U6 this thing will be feature-complete.

 

[Infinitron]

This is fucking awesome. Hasn't Nuvie been in the works for a very long time, around when Exult came out? I'm loving the rapid development lately.

That's correct. You can read the interview with the developers, they talk about this.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2013/01/mythic-entertainment-congratulates-the-nuvie-team/

Mythic Entertainment Congratulates the Nuvie Team

I missed posting this last week, but over on the Ultima Forever Facebook page, Mythic Entertainment posted a picture of one of the prizes they have generously donated to the winner of the 2012 Fan Project of the Year award, Nuvie. Each member of the Nuvie development team will receive a citation and Virtue Card set.

Many thanks to Mythic for contributing to the contest in this way, and for continuing to support the efforts of the Ultima fan community as they strive to bring the best of the series to new and wider audiences, and to add new and exciting gameplay elements for those of us who have followed the series for some time to explore.

 

[Malignant Manor]

Here's a Codex post with an update on Nuvie. Hopefully 0.5 will be released in a month or so (no idea when Eric and I will have time to work on the last little bit).

 

[taxalot]

Haha, oh wow, I missed the entry about Mythic congratulating them as being the "Ultima fan project of the year". At least, they deserve a few points for unintended honesty.

 

[Malignant Manor]

Here's a minor update.

• I added the menus to the game days ago. They are accessed by ESC.
• Space and ESC now close gumps when not canceling anything else.
  
• I fixed some problems with using tab to go from the inventory screen to the status screen.
• I added QUICK_SAVE and QUICK_LOAD key bindings. They need a parameter of the save file number. Example: QUICK_LOAD 0 loads nuvieU6qs000.sav
• I added quick save and quick load for quick save 0 to the new command bar. (accessed by the comma key). I will probably add a small menu of quick save slots but have no idea when.
• I fixed some bugs not worth mentioning and a bug where the ending wouldn't show if you didn't disable showing the intro.
• Eric fixed the FM Towns bug. (I misremembered it being recently added.)

I''m currently trying to get Sam Matthews to make some video settings not require a reset. Eric said he is working on a new gui scroll for large text blocks in fullscreen map mode. The latest Nuvie SVN snapshots are available here.

 

[Malignant Manor]

Mikey Alexander has been helping with some SE related stuff and plans to work on usecode and cutscenes next.

• Mikey Alexander added SE intro, character creation, and about SE
  
• I added mouse support and key shortcuts for the SE main menu and intro stuff. Character creation answers can't currently be selected with a mouse. There was never mouse support in the original SE menu so there are no buttons to select with a click or arrow keys and enter.
• I fixed a bug where the --end command line option wouldn't show the ending
• I added a --reset_video command line to reset to default video setting for scale_method, scale_factor, fullscreen, screen_width, screen_height, game_width, and game_height.

The latest Nuvie SVN snapshots are available here.



(We went a month without any work being done before these updates.)

 

[Malignant Manor]

I've started work on two new game styles, original+ and original+ full map. They are a work in progress and are only setup to work in U6. Original+ allows the game to use the original UI and have resolutions greater than 320x200. It gets rid of some useless background to show more of the game map. Original+ will have will stop drawing the map when the UI begins. Original+ full map will draw the map underneath UI if the height is at least 230. (Original+ full map should use a resolution a bit taller than that since only one pixel will be displayed at that height.)

This isn't in the repository yet. You can download the Windows binary and patch here. I hope to release Nuvie 0.5 soon after this gets added. We plan to do some more bug fixes and testing.

If height is 229 or greater, then original+ styles will put the command bar on the bottom right. Otherwise, it will be on the bottom left. Both original+ styles can hide and show the command bar by pressing the period key. I originally intended to be able to hide the rest of the UI when using original+ full map but it isn't practical to implement.

Fullscreen map has been renamed to new and the general/fullscreen_map cfg option has been replaced by video/game_style. The options are original, new setting, original+, and original+_full_map and they can be set in the video options menu. A new cfg setting, ultima6/orig_plus_cb_text_color, will select the palette index color to use when displaying the text on the U6 command bar.

Pictures can explain the differences better than I can. Currently, the original+ pictures are mockups since the border isn't displaying properly in original+ and the border isn't showing at all in original+ full map. Original+ has background corruption when showing roofs. Even with current issues, original+ still looks decent at 320 width (left border is missing) and will give more game area than the original.



Original 320x200, . . . . . . . original+ 320x200 . . . . . . . original+ 640x400, . . . . . . . original+ full map 640x400


Other changes are

• Eric added Daniel's new U6 celestial ribbon to the new UI. It shows the sun/moon locations and the current wind direction.
• Eric added new dolls for companions drawn by HiPhish
• Eric added more MD usecode and added spawned npc stats
• Eric did work on WoU portrait support
• I Restricted INTERFACE_FULLSCREEN to INTERFACE_NORMAL if in combat mode.
• Eric started work on a new long text gump. This will be used to display large blocks of text in the new fullscreen UI. eg looking at pictures, books etc.
• I added mouse and arrow key selection for SE character creation
  
• Bug fixes

HiPhish is looking for opinions on the new dolls on the Nuvie forum. He also plans to work on new tiles for the companions so they don't look like every other generic actor.

 

[Infinitron]

Awesome! Having the buttons shoved in the corner like that probably isn't a good idea, though.

 

[Malignant Manor]

I should probably look into left, center, and right options. Having people set the x and y coordinates is very problematic. If on the right, should it be directly under the rest of the UI like the picture below? I don't know what to call that, maybe below_UI. (I'm horrible a naming stuff.) The bar is one pixel larger than the rest so it doesn't really stick out if all the way to the right, but it does leave a button on the edge. On the 320x200 image, I can only
move it over one pixel.

I fixed an issue that had the wrong position when deciding to black out areas. The updated patch is here but not a Windows binary. Eric is looking into the background display issues.

 

[Infinitron]

Malignant Manor It's probably more important that the buttons be scaled up a bit so they aren't so tiny. Then you can put them wherever.