[WIP] Rethinking Ultima II

Chris H.'s Ultima / ACS-style game development system!

Moderators: Ice Cream Jonsey, joltcountry

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

Here is a quick update.

I have completed the Iron Mine (Devonian), Penninsula Prison (Triassic), Bog Cave (Triassic), and one level of sewers under Port Bonifice (AD). This includes placement of all monsters and treasure. I have also placed most of the NPCs in Port Bonifice, but I still have a few dialogues to create there, so it isn't entirely complete yet. My plan is to have deep sewers connecting Port Bonifice and Lord British's Castle, and an important NPC (one of the escapees from Minax's ranks of slaves) will be living down there in a hard-to-reach place.

Summerfield (Devonian), Port Panthalassa (Triassic), and three of the eight lighthouses (AD) are now fully mapped, but not all of the life has been placed yet. The expanded New San Antonio is nearly done; I just need to place some stuff in the northwest corner of town. Port Panthalassa and New San Antonio are heavily populated towns, so I will have to create a number of dialogues before those can be considered finished.

Also, ideas for quests involving the lighthouses and the Temple of Peace in AD are coming together; this should make them more interesting to visit. I'm also planning out the quests related to the crazy Emperor of Gondwana in the Devonian. I'm thinking that the village of Summerfield and the ruin of Port Granville will be key to this quest. (The entire village of Summerfield is a big pop culture reference. It will be interesting to see who gets it.) I've already determined which of the magical items necessary to defeat Minax will be in the Emperor's possession. Once I have this quest fully planned, I'll probably prioritize the completion of the Devonian locations and might offer that time period as my next release, with Triassic, AD, and Aftermath partially completed. I'm glad I decided to add the Devonian. The geography of that time is quite interesting, and it makes a good setting for a game.

The other locations have not changed since my last post.

Heather

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

A little more progress this weekend...

I have done a lot of work on the Gondwana Castle/Prison/Dungeon complex in the Devonian time period. A major quest in the game will be set there, and it is a huge place - a custom worldmap as large as the wilderness areas. This isn't the sort of place where the player just uses brute force to reach the final goal (like the Troll Caves in BC). Instead, there are puzzles to solve. It features switch puzzles, teleporter puzzles, and a changing maze. I have much of this place mapped out, and I have planned out (but not yet written) the macros that govern the various puzzles. There will be monsters here and there, but it won't be as monster-infested as the Troll Caves. In a way, I see this place as preparation for the final quest. The dungeon and castle leading to Minax will be like this, only worse. Hopefully, having some places with a lot of puzzles to solve will make the game more interesting.

Also, I got ideas for the introduction and death sequences, and I have been implementing those. I'll probably post an update when they are done. The introduction provides a choice of four paths, and the path chosen affects initial skills, abilities, and equipment. The four paths correspond roughly to the four professions in the original Ultima II - fighter, thief (equivalent to fighting bard in the new version), wizard, cleric. I might decide later to have the chosen path affect parts of the game. For example, a non-cleric might need more training points and have higher level requirements to learn and cast cleric spells, or a wizard might gain combat skills more slowly than a fighter. The chosen path could even affect dialogues and quests.

Heather

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

I've been working on a few things, and it's time for an update.

Devonian: The wilderness, Rhea (town), Summerfield (village), Port Granville (ruin), Wardley Farm, Antler Farm, Sandstone Ranch, and the Iron Mine are fully mapped, and some life has been added, but only the Iron Mine is fully populated. The large castle/dungeon/prison complex owned by the crazy Emperor of Gondwana is partially mapped. Caledonian Caverns has not been started.

Triassic: The wilderness, Baradin's Town, and Port Panthalassa (town) are fully mapped, but not fully populated. The Bog Cave and Penninsula Prison are complete. Wizard's Retreat (village), Dawn Farms (village), Triassic Tower, Iapetus Mine, Cynodont Burrows, Lazy R Ranch, Cheston Farm, and Wardick's House are not started.

BC: Complete. I have recently fixed a few minor bugs.

AD: The wilderness, Port Bonifice, Temple of Peace, and three lighthouses are fully mapped but not fully populated. The Ruins of Thule, the Ruined Temple, The Boneyard (cave), and Bat Roost Mine are complete. Lord British's Castle, New San Antonio, New Vladivostok, and Lair of Thieves (cave) are partially mapped. There are more towns, villages, lighthouses, houses, dungeons, and towers that are not started yet.

Aftermath: The wilderness, Pirate's Harbour (ground level), and York's House are mapped but not fully populated. The ruins of Lord British's Castle, Dead Cave, and Rocky Cave are complete. Destiny (dungeon/town), Pirate's Harbour (sewer), Ultima Thule (dungeon), and Lava Cave are not started.

Most of my work at mapping new locations is in the Devonian right now. I have planned out the Emperor of Gondwana quest, and I intend to finish that time period next.

I will send out another release soon. The next release will implement some of the features from rld's patch and fix a few bugs.

Heather

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

It's been a while since I've posted on my progress. Work continues on various elements of the game. Some of the planet wilderness maps are now done, and the various locations on Earth are closer to completion.

Also, I am starting to implement a macro that will be executed after the Ready command. It will impose minimum strength and intelligence requirements on certain weapons and armor, and it will apply skill taxes and bonuses for various items that are equipped. The player's innate weapon skill and ranged weapon skill will now be stored together in the variable N, and this variable will be modified during training. In general, cumbersome weapons or armor will require higher strength and may have significant skill taxes, while certain magical items, although they might have significant strength and/or intelligence requirements, will have skill bonuses. Also, a few of these items will remove any skill taxes due to other items that are equipped.

If the player tries to equip a prohibited item, the macro will immediately un-equip it.

I will post another message when this feature is done and tested. Perhaps this idea will be of use in some of the other games people are creating.

Also, I've uploaded the latest version. See the release thread for details.

Heather

User avatar
Garth's Equipment Shop
Posts: 638
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:55 pm
Location: Festering Foothills
Contact:

Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

Hi Heather, how's the WIP going?
Which of you is interested in my fine wares?

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

I haven't done much lately with the maps, but I have been working on macros. I am working on a series of macros to give me more control over how merchants operate, and I am making some changes related to rld's tile change patch. That will allow me to provide a lot more variability in the appearance of towns and dungeons, and it will allow me to create more types of monsters. Implementing these changes will take some time, but they will make this rather large game a lot better. When these changes are complete, I will upload a new version.

The merchant macros will be the most complicated series of macros I have created so far, so they could be buggy at first.

Heather

rld
Posts: 223
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:17 am
Location: Dallas, TX

Post by rld »

Heather Harrison wrote:I haven't done much lately with the maps, but I have been working on macros. I am working on a series of macros to give me more control over how merchants operate, and I am making some changes related to rld's tile change patch.
If you think of any changes that you would like to see to the built-in merchant/shop functionality, let me know and I will see what I can do. This is a fairly self-contained portion of the code, so it shouldn't be too difficult to modify.

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

Here is what I am implementing in macros. Maybe some of this can be implemented in the code. (Note that this is currently in progress and not fully tested, and I might change my mind on some features.)

1. In the dialogue, a number of variables are set, and these are used to indicate what the merchant sells, what the merchant will buy back, and what menu is displayed. Separate dialogue commands to buy from the merchant or to sell to the merchant are used, and each one can therefore have different settings. For example, a merchant might sell certain items, but be willing to buy a different selection.

2. The macro displays a long message (which must, of course, be created manually for each merchant), which is the shopkeeper's menu. Additionally, the player's money is displayed, and if the player is selling to the merchant, it displays how many of each item the player has. Then, the macro accepts a key press.

3. ACK's object numbers are not used directly. The variables set in the dialogue use different numbers which indirectly reference the ACK object numbers. This is done, first, to save bits so that I can get more use out of limited variables. Since, for example, one would never find a merchant selling mountains, it is not necessary for it to be possible to place mountains on the merchant's menu. Also, this allows me to assign different codes for quantity purchases. For example, 13 might be one loaf of bread, while 14 might be a dozen loaves of bread.

4. Standard prices are hard-coded into the macros, and one of the variables passed to the macro is a factor that can modify the price.

5. When the player presses a key to select the item, the macro looks up the price, the quantity, and the ACK object number, and adjusts the player's inventory accordingly.

I decided to do this because I wanted more control over pricing, the ability to add simple quantity purchases to standard merchant menus for items commonly purchased in bulk, and to limit the items a merchant will buy back. The existing system, in which any merchant will buy anything, does not make sense - why would a merchant who sells potions want to buy used swords? I have already implemented a special menu-based system for food vendors, but I want to generalize it.

If you find some of these features reasonably easy to add to the code, it would be helpful. It would certainly make it easy to implement a merchant system like this in other games. The macro method I'm working on is definitely a kluge, but it seems like it will work, albeit at the cost of using up 10 or more macros.

Heather

rld
Posts: 223
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:17 am
Location: Dallas, TX

Post by rld »

Heather -

Which version of the mega-patch are you currently using with the game? Still 0.1, or have you updated it to use 0.2?

The reason I ask is that I was trying out your current version with 0.2, and the combat seemed to be working oddly right off the bat (the rats in the initial part of the world map were invulnerable to my starting shortbow weapon). Just wanted to make sure you had actually modified the game to use 0.2 before I started trying to figure out if this is a bug I need to fix.

Heather Harrison
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri May 21, 2010 8:40 pm

Post by Heather Harrison »

I am using 0.2. I might have to take a look at it; perhaps there is an error in the definition of the shortbow. Other weapons seem to work fine.

Sorry I haven't been around for a while. My life has been busy lately. I have gone back to school to get a second Bachelor's degree, and it is taking a lot of time, so progress on this is likely to be slow for a while. My first degree - in electrical engineering - is too useful and too good for making money, so I need another one that is far less practical. This time, I'm majoring in English, and I'm spending a good deal of time reading difficult books that make my brain hurt (which is precisely what I wanted).

Despite this, I continue to pick away at this game, and I'll post an update when major progress is made.

Heather

User avatar
Ice Cream Jonsey
Posts: 28881
Joined: Sat Apr 27, 2002 2:44 pm
Location: Colorado
Contact:

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I think I speak for all of us when I say that we are looking forward to it!
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

User avatar
Tdarcos
Posts: 9333
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 9:25 am
Location: Arlington, Virginia
Contact:

Post by Tdarcos »

Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Sounds great Heather, especially the Aftermath part. I'm a sucker for anything with a post-apocalyptic theme.
I think you'll like the movie "Book of Ely" then.

Visit My Site; now with more than 103,716% more content than Pinback's!
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

rld
Posts: 223
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:17 am
Location: Dallas, TX

Post by rld »

No updates on this one in a while, and the original download link for the WIP files at xmission doesn't appear to be working now...

Heather, any news/updates on this?

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

Post by Chris H »

I'm very curious to hear more about this too - I had been thinking how cool an ACK remake of Ultima II could be. I had some ideas kicking around in my head but I hadn't actually started anything. It sounds like someone's been making some great progress along these lines!

Post Reply